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I gaze upon thy wide domain 

From mountain unto boundless sea, 

And listen to the grand refrain 
The pillared forests sing to me. 



Californian Pictures 



PROSE AND VERSE 



BENJAMIN PARKE AVERY 



NEW YORK 
PUBLISHED BY KURD AND HOUGHTON 

1878 

ir 



.A'?4 



Copyright, 1877, 
Bv MARY A. AVERY 



RIVERSIDE PRESS, CAMBRIDGE: 

STEREOTYPED AND PRINTED BY 

H. O. HOUGHTON AND COMPANY. 



TO THE MEMORY OF 

SAMUEL PUTNAM AVERY, 

Obit New York, 1832. 



CONTENTS. 



PAGE 

A WORD BEFORE 9 

NATURE AND ART '3 

A WILD NOSEGAY '^ 

MOUNTAIN, LAKE, AND VALLEY I9 

A MEMORY OF THE SIERRA 63 

UP THE WESTERN SLOPE ^^ 

SUNRISE NEAR HENNESS PASS ^4 

ON THE SUMMIT ^7 

EL RIO DE LAS PLUMAS "^ 

HEAD-WATERS OF THE SACRAMENTO i^' 

THE BIRTH OF BEAUTY '5° 

ASCENT OF MOUNT SHASTA '52 

THE MEADOW LARK '9i 



THE GEYSERS 



193 



GOLDEN GATE PARK "^6 

CITY SCENERY ^39 



VI CONTENTS. 

PAGE 

THE FAWN ON CHANGE , .261 

SANTA CRUZ MOUNTAINS 264 

AUTOCHTHONES . . 280 

THE FIRST PEOPLE ■ .282 

SONG OF THE VAQUERO 311 

THE TRINITY DIAMOND SH 

OLD AND NEW . 343 



ILLUSTRATIONS. 



DRAWN BY ENGRAVED BY PAGB 

FRONTISPIECE. 
(From a Sketch by G. A. Frost) Thomas Moran W. H. Morse. 

FOOT-HILLS OF THE COAST RANGE. 

(From a Sketch by W. Keith) . Thomas Moran . J. A. Bogert . . 24 

YOSEMITE FALLS, FROM GLACIER POINT. 

(From a Photograph) .... Alfred Kappes F. Juengling . . 44 ^ 

SECTION OF SNOW-SHED. 

(From a Photograph) .... C.A.Vanderhoof Robert Varley . 91 ^ 

CROWN OF THE SIERRA. 

(From a Sketch by W. Keith) . Thomas Moran . E. Bookhout . . 109 

DONNER LAKE. 
(From a Photograph) . . . Alfred Kappes F. Juengling . . no ^ 

MOUNT SHASTA, FROM CASTLE LAKE. 
(From a Sketch by H. G. Bloomer) Thomas Moran J. S. Harley . . 122 

GOLDEN GATE, FROM CONTRA COSTA HILLS. 
(From a Sketch by W. Keith) . Thomas Moran Robert Varley . 192 

VALLEY OAKS. 

(From a Photograph) Alfred Kappes John P. Davis . 198 

MOUNT ST. HELENA. 
(From a Photograph) .... Alfred Kappes Bookhout Bros. 202 , 

MOUNT TAMALPAIS. 

(From a Sketch by W. Keith) . W.H.Gibson . Horace Baker 246 

MOUNT DIABLO. 

(From a Sketch by W. Keith) . W. H. Gibson . F. S. King ... 250 

LOMA PRIETA. 
(From a Sketch by W. Keith) . W. H. Gibson . Meeder & Chubb 278 



A WORD BEFORE. 



The only aim of the following pages is to present 
a few word-sketches of Californian scenery-studies 
from nature, true to local color and form, and barely 
indicating the salient characteristics of plant and an- 
imal life and rocky structure. Those who love nat- 
ure for her own sake, and for her relations to the 
best art, will sympathize with the motive, whatever 
may be the imperfection, of these sketches. Some of 
them originally appeared in the " Overland Monthly," 
but these have been retouched for this volume. The 
closing sketches, under the titles of " The First Peo- 
ple " and " The Trinity Diamond," are not entirely 
descriptive of scenery, but. introduce the figures of 
the Indians and the roving miners, who were once 



lO A WORD BEFORE. 

very characteristic of Californian landscapes, and still 
remain a part of them. All of the illustrations are 
after drawings or photographs from nature, the for- 
mer made by artists who have found their whole in- 
spiration in California, and who are helping to create 
there an original school of art. The interspersed 
verses make no poetical pretensions. They are in- 
tended only as pictures in rhyme, and not finished 
pictures at that. 

It should be stated that descriptions of some of 
the most remarkable scenery in California — such as 
Yosemite, the Big Tree groves, and those regions of 
the high sierra lying in the southern part of the 
State — are purposely withheld, for the reason that 
they have been already better described by Prof. J. D. 
Whitney, Clarence King, and John Muir, have been 
illustrated and written about by scores of artists and 
authors, and have so become in a measure hackneyed. 
It was, besides, the wish of the present writer to de- 
scribe what was most familiar and recent in his own 

* 

experience. So much admiration has been lavished 



A WORD BEFORE. II 

on two or three grand features of the State, that pict- 
uresque details and the claims of less celebrated spots 
are neglected. Even in this little work much is 
overlooked that will yet employ profitably abler 
hands. 



CALIFORNIAN PICTURES. 



NATURE AND ART. 

When Art was young, Pygmalion formed 

A marble maid, divinely fair ; 
Her beauty all his being warmed, 

And moved him to enraptured prayer: 

"Oh, leave her not a senseless stone. 
Almighty Jove, enthroned above ! 
But give her life to bless my own, 
Endow her with the soul of love ! " 

Jove heard, and smiled. The marble flushed 
Like snow-peak at the coming sun : 
" Pygmalion ! " Lo ! she spoke and blushed ! 
And thus his stainless bride he won. 



14 CALIFORNIAN PICTURES. 

And ever since the artist-touch 
Has had a quick, Promethean fire, 

For all who love their labor much, 
Who nobly struggle and aspire. 

To such the miracles recur 

That only genius works at will, 

That seem dead images to stir. 
And every source of feeling thrill. 

Thus Nature ever, to the heart 
That rightly seeks her, answer gives ; 

In every master-work of Art 
A portion of her spirit lives. 

The templed pile, the marble shape. 
The painted tree, the stream, the sod, 

Are only forms her soul to drape — 
For " Nature is the art of God ! " 

The painter, when he spreads his tints, 
That only mimic what is real, 

If Nature guides him, nobly hints 
Her dearest charm, her sweet ideal. 



NATURE AND ART. 1 5 

The rose a richer beauty takes 

From hands that she has deftly taught ; 

The violet sweeter perfume makes 
When Art has wedded it to thought. 

Goddess ! On thy altar tops 

Of awful peaks that touch the blue, 
Where every snowy gem that drops 
Unmelted lies in stainless hue, 

1 gaze upon thy wide domain 

From mountain unto boundless sea, 
And listen to the grand refrain 
The pillowed forests sing to thee ; 

For down below, in circling ranks. 

The pines uplift their branching arms ; 

And farther, on the river banks. 

The oaks reveal their milder charms. 

And as I leave the dizzy height. 

Returning to the valley mead. 
Gray rocks with lichens are bedight. 

And flowers up-spring of lowly breed. 



1 6 CALIFORNIAN PICTURES. 

The happy creatures of the wild 

Bound from the thicket on my way — 

The mother doe, the fawn her child — 
As half in fright and half in play. 

By springs where viny tresses cling, 
And tuneful gurgles meet the ear, 

The feathered people drink and sing, 
Or seek the covert in their fear. 

But soon the cabin's lazy smoke 
I see above the orchard curl ; 

And, hark ! what sound the silence broke ? 
The jocund laugh of boy and girl ! 

Around and round, in merry rout, 
I see them go, as though to play 

Were all of life, and care and doubt 
Could never cloud their summer day. 

The oriole her pendent nest 

Is hanging from the willow bough ; 

The lark with joy distends his breast, 
And warbles to the lowins: cow. 



NATURE AND ART. I 7 

Thus Nature everywhere repeats 

The beauty and the love she owns ; 
From hill to sea her rhythmic beat 

Is heard in many blending tones. 

And Art, her handmaid, catches up 

The glory of each sound and sight, 
To pour them from her magic cup, 

A draught to steep us in delight. 



A WILD NOSEGAY. 



Sweet-scented messengers from landscape green, 
Thy presence is a blessing in my cot, 
A still memento of each sunny spot, 
Or shaded, where my wandering feet have been 
In search of thee. The winding, wet ravine, 
Luxuriant with golden flowers ; the grot 
Beneath the live-oak, where small blossoms dot 
The mossy rock, and humming-birds are seen 
To flash and quiver through the tremulous leaves 
Of snowy buckeye ; and the mountain steep 
Or wooded summit, where sad zephyr grieves 
Forever through the branches of the pine ; — 
All helped to form thee, and thou still dost keep 
Their charms before me, which I blend with thine. 



MOUNTAIN, LAKE, AND VALLEY. 



In attempting a general introductory view of the 
scenography of California, we shall be aided by an out- 
line of its topography. The materials for this are to 
be found mainly in the preliminary report upon the 
geology of California by Prof. J. D. Whitney. Before 
the great work conducted by him was begun, hardly 
fourteen years ago, there was little exact knowledge 
of the physical structure of the Golden State. Its 
broadest features were known in a general way ; but 
some of the most remarkable regions were unexplored, 
and a mass of interesting details had been only casu- 
ally observed, if at all. An adventurous and daring 
people, engaged in the stimulating search for gold, 
had revealed the secrets of many places which would 



20 CALIFORNIAN PICTURES. 

else be blank spaces on the maps ; but the area of a 
territory larger than New England, New York, and 
Pennsylvania combined, and embracing two mount- 
ain chains surpassing in some respects the Alps 
and Appalachians, could not be thoroughly explored 
and accurately described without concerted effort to 
that end. When that effort — temporarily abandoned 
through a freak of ignorant legislation — shall be re- 
sumed and completed, we shall have, in a series of 
valuable reports even now far advanced, ample mate- 
rial for special studies. In the mean time, even such 
a mere sketch as we shall offer of the valley and 
lake system of California may prove interesting to 
the general reader. The topography of California is 
characterized by a grand simplicity. Two mountain- 
chains — the Coast Range and the Sierra Nevada — 
outline the form of the State ; the one extending along 
the Pacific shore, on its western side ; the other, along 
its eastern border, overlooking the great basin of the 
middle continent ; and both interlocking north and 
south, inclosing the broad, level valleys of the Sacra- 



MOUNTAIN, LAKE, AND VALLEY. 21 

mento and San Joaquin. The axial lines of these 
chains have a northwesterly and southeasterly course. 
They are clearly distinguished between the thirty- 
fifth and fortieth parallels — the valleys named, which 
have a length of nearly three hundred and fifty miles, 
and a breadth of from forty to eighty miles, separating 
the two systems completely. North and south of the 
limits named, the Coast Range and the Sierra Nevada 
are topographically one, distinguishable only by geo- 
logical differences ; the former having been uplifted 
since the cretaceous deposition, and the latter before 
that epoch. The Coast Range is inferior in altitude, 
averaging only from two thousand to six thousand feet 
above the sea, and having few prominent peaks. It 
extends the whole length of the State, say seven hun- 
dred miles, and has an aggregate width of forty miles ; 
but it is broken into numerous minor ridges, marked 
by striking local differences, and separated by an ex- 
tensive series of long, narrow valleys, which are usu- 
ally well watered, level, fertile, and lovely. The Sierra 
Nevada has an altitude of from four thousand to 



22 CALIFORNJAN PICTURES. 

twelve thousand feet, and an average width of eighty 
or one hundred miles. It rises from the central valley 
in solid majesty, reaching by a gradual slope its double 
crests, which culminate in a nearly straight line of 
peaks extending a distance of five hundred miles. 
There is no peak in the Coast Range which rises 
above eight thousand feet. The Sierra Nevada has 
a hundred peaks which rise about thirteen thousand 
feet, and at least one which soars fifteen thousand 
feet. Where the two ranges join at the north (lati- 
tude forty degrees, thirty-five minutes), Mount Shasta, 
which may be taken as a point of connection, attains 
an elevation of fourteen thousand four hundred and 
forty feet. Its snowy summits can be seen from great 
distances in Oregon, California, and Nevada, and is 
nearly twice the height of any other mountain in its 
vicinity. As the Sierra Nevada extends southward 
from this point, it gradually increases its general alti- 
tude. For three hundred miles the passes range from 
four thousand to eight thousand feet above the sea, 
and the peaks from one thousand to two thousand 



MOUNTAIN, LAKE, AND VALLEY. 23 

feet higher. But from latitude thirty-eight degrees, 
for a distance of two hundred miles along the summit, 
there is no pass known lower than eleven thousand 
feet, and within that distance all the chief peaks have 
an elevation of thirteen thousand feet. 

The summits of the Coast Range are only occasion- 
ally whitened with snow in the winter. Those of the 
Sierra Nevada are covered with it every winter to a 
great depth, and on some of them it never melts. The 
Coast Range rises with tolerable abruptness facing 
the sea, its inner line of ridges sloping gradually to 
the central valley. The Sierra Nevada has a gradual 
ascent on its western side, but an abrupt one on its 
eastern, the latter being only half as long as the for- 
mer, since it meets the elevated plateau of Nevada or 
Utah, four thousand to five thousand feet above the 
sea. The Coast Range is broken near its centre, at 
the Golden Gate, where the Bay of San Francisco 
receives and discharges the waters of the Sacramento 
and its tributaries, forming the river system of the 
whole northern interior ; and those of the San Joa- 



24 CALIFORNIAN PICTURES. 

quin, forming the river system of the southern inte- 
rior as far as the Alpine region of the Sierra. The 
Sierra Nevada is unbroken in its whole length, al- 
though the table-lands and depressions at its north- 
ern and southern extremities are nearly on the level 
of the plateau to the eastward, and offer the easiest 
wagon and railroad approaches from that side. The 
most striking feature of the vegetation of the Coast 
Range is its majestic groves of redwood, which flour- 
ish only in the foggy regions north of San Luis 
Obispo, and in connection with a soil overlying a 
metamorphic sandstone. The inner ridges of the 
Coast Range are frequently bare, or covered chiefly 
with varieties of oak, interspersed with the madrofia, 
remarkable for its smooth, bronzed trunk, its curling 
bark, and its waxen leaves. When not tree-clad, these 
inner ridges, to a height of from five hundred to twen- 
ty-five hundred feet, are covered with wild oats, and 
suggest the idea of immense harvest-fields that have 
been thrust up by volcanic energy, and left standing 
high in the blue air. As the state geologist says : ^ 

1 Yosemite Guide-book, p. 35. 



MOUNTAIN, LAKE, AND VALLEY. 25 

" What gives its peculiar character to the Coast Range 
scenery is, the dehcate and beautiful carving of their 
masses by the aqueous erosion of the soft material of 
which they are composed, and which is made conspic- 
uous by the general absence of forest and shrubby 
vegetation, except in the canons and along the crest 
of the ranges. The bareness of the slopes gives full 
play to the effects of light and shade caused by the 
varying and intricate contour of the surface. In the 
early spring these slopes are of the most vivid green, 
the awakening to life of the vegetation of this region 
beginning just when the hills and valleys of the East- 
ern States are most deeply covered by snow. Spring 
here, in fact, commences with the end of summer ; 
winter there is none. Summer, blazing summer, tem- 
pered by the ocean fogs and ocean breezes, is fol- 
lowed by a long and delightful six months' spring, 
which in its turn passes almost instantaneously away, 
at the approach of another summer. As soon as the 
dry season sets in, the herbage withers under the sun's 
rays, except in the deep canons ; the surface becomes 



26 CALIFORNIAN PICTURES. 

first of a pale green, then of a light straw yellow, 
and finally, of a rich russet-brown color, against which 
the dark green foliage of the oaks and pines, unchang- 
ing during the summer, is deeply contrasted." The 
most striking feature of the regetation of the Sierra 
Nevada is its magnificent growth of pines, comprising 
several species which attain a height of from one 
hundred and fifty to three hundred feet, and the 
famous groves of Sequoia giga^itca, which equal in 
height, if not in age, the pyramids of Egypt. The 
prominent lithological feature of the Coast Range is 
the prevalence of metamorphic cretaceous rocks. The 
lithological structure of the Sierra Nevada is more 
primitive, granite being the prominent feature, under- 
lying a greater part of its extensive beds of auriferous 
gravel, and giving an air of gray desolation to its 
naked summits, which bear the marks of ancient orla- 
ciers. The Sierra Nevada is also distinguished for 
the evidences it presents of the tremendous forces 
that raised it at three successive epochs above the sea. 
A hundred volcanoes have blazed along its crest, and 



MOUNTAIN, LAKE, AND VALLEY. 27 

have covered with lava an area of not less than 
twenty thousand square miles, not uniformly level or 
sloping, but seamed with canons hundreds or thou- 
sands of feet deep, through which flow the living 
streams of the Sierra. Sometimes this lava overlies, 
and at others underlies, the deposits of gold-bearing 
gravel wrought by the miner. Sometimes the erup- 
tive rocks, contemporaneous with its flow, rise in 
picturesque crags that rival in height the summits 
of the older granite. 

This glance at the mountain frame-work of Cal- 
ifornia is necessary to an understanding of its lake 
and valley system. The chief feature of this system 
is the central valley of the Sacramento and San 
Joaquin, supplemented at the south by the valleys 
of the Tulare and Kern. These valleys form a basin 
about four hundred miles long by fifty or sixty miles 
wide, which was anciently the site of lacustrine or 
marine waters. In its northern portion rises abrupdy 
from the level plain a singular local mountain ridge, 
known as Sutter's Buttes, which is an object of beauty 



28 CALIFORNIAN PICTURES. 

in the landscape views of that region, and seems, in 
the flooded seasons, Hke an island in the main. North 
of the Buttes the valley gently swells to meet the 
foot-hills of the blending Sierra and Coast Range ; 
and these uplands consist of a red and gravelly soil, 
whereas the general surface of the valley southward is 
a rich, deep loam, which has frequently been known 
to yield from sixty to seventy bushels of wheat to the 
acre. The climate of this fertile basin is very warm 
in summer, and favorable to the out-door growth of 
roses and strawberries in winter. It is timbered at 
intervals with open parks of oaks, which become 
more numerous near the foot-hills on either side, and 
there mix with inferior conifers and minor veo-etable 
forms, including the characteristic manzanita, buckeye, 
and laurel. The principal rivers are fringed with 
sycamore, oak, cottonwood, willow, alder, and white 
maple. Sweet-briers bloom close to the streams, and, 
where the timber has not been cut away, the wild 
grape-vine still hangs its graceful curtains, through 
which the boatman catches glimpses of beautiful 



MOUNTAIN, LAKE, AND VALLEY. 29 

woodland or valley scenes, and a far background of 
hazy mountains. Immense tracts are annually cov- 
ered with a luxuriant growth of wild oats, which, alter- 
nately green or gold, according to the season, rolls its 
surface in rippling light and shade under every breeze. 
The moist bottoms yield heavy crops of grass. In 
the spring, the whole surface of these valleys, where 
not cultivated, is thickly covered with wild flowers of 
every color ; and the scene of this gay parterre, bro- 
ken with seas of verdant grain, and bounded by walls 
of blue or purple mountains, whose peaks are capped 
with snow, is quite entrancing. These charming 
plains were the favorite resort of the aborigines, who 
found in the streams that drain them plenty of salmon, 
sturgeon, and lesser fish, and all over their extent 
herds of antelope and elk, and myriads of ducks and 
geese, besides quail, doves, hares, rabbits, and squir- 
rels. The grizzly would sometimes come from the 
hills to eat fish and berries ; but he was game beyond 
the skill of the simple savages who once enjoyed the 
central valley alone. Into the rivers discharge the 



30 CALIFORNIAN PICTURES. 

numerous channels which cut the western slope of 
the Sierra, receiving the heavy rains that wash its 
flanks, and the melting of the deep snows upon its 
summit, and almost annually the accumulated torrents 
overflow portions of the level land. 

There are no lakes in the central valley, except in 
its lower extremity, where Tulare Lake, thirt3^-three 
miles long by twenty-two wide, surrounded by a broad 
area of reedy marshes, forms the mysterious sink for 
all the streams coursing down the western slope of 
the southern Sierra. The general features of the 
valleys in Fresno, Tulare, and Kern counties, are not 
essentially different from those of the Sacramento and 
San Joaquin, which they supplement. The chief 
point of difference is their hydrography. There are 
considerable tracts of marsh land in the laro^er val- 
leys named, but they are formed by the rivers and 
estuaries of the central bay ; while those of the lower 
valleys are an adjunct of the lakes, about which 
they comprise an area of fully two hundred and fifty 
square miles. 



MOUNTAIN, LAKE, AND VALLEY. 31 

Most of the streams of the central valley flow from 
the Sierra Nevada. A dozen principal branches of 
the Sacramento and San Joaquin rivers, and the riv- 
ers that sink in the Tulare Lake, are fed alone a dis- 
tance of four hundred miles, from Shasta to Tejon, 
by several hundred tributaries which rise in that 
great chain. In the same distance a few score of 
creeks flow eastward from the inner rids:es of the 
Coast Range, to the central basin, and some of these 
are dry in the summer. The small rivers of the 
Coast Range flow through the intervales, emptying 
either into the ocean at right angles to the trend of 
the coast, or following the valleys parallel with the 
trend till they reach some of the bays that make 
inland. 

The valleys in the Coast Range are numerous and 
dissimilar, though possessing some marked character- 
istics in common. Those of one class lie open to the 
sea, and are usually narrow, with a trend nearly east 
and west, or following that of the coast. Most of 
them are found south of the Bay of San Francisco, 



32 CALIFORNIAN PICTURES. 

itself skirted by a series of valleys which slope from 
the base of the Mount Diablo range. The largest 
of the coast valleys is the Salinas, in the Santa Cruz 
and Monterey district. It is about ninety miles long 
by eight to fourteen miles wide, mostly arable, and 
yielding heavy crops of wild oats and clover. Al- 
though the open coast valleys are subject to the winds 
and fogs, they possess a fine climate, and are cultivated 
to the very margin of the sea. It is a beautiful sight 
to behold their grassy margins skirting the crescent 
lines of small bays, or their wide fields of yellow grain 
contrasting with the blue line of the ocean, while be- 
hind rise the rumpled velvet of bare hills, tawny or 
verdant, with the season, and the farther crests of 
cloud-ofirt summits bristlins^ with redwood forests that 
keep moist in the salty air. Perhaps the most pict- 
uresque valley that opens to the sea, though it meets 
the ocean only at its extremity, is Russian River Val- 
ley, north of San Francisco. It is long and narrow, 
has a generally level but sometimes rolling surface, 
is traversed by a clear stream, and bounded on either 



MOUNTAIN, LAKE, AND VALLEY. 1-}^ 

hand by ridges, which have a great variety of form. 
Its groves of oak, its picturesque knolls, its vistas of 
conical peaks, its winding stream, alternately placid 
and rapid, its luxuriant carpet of grass, grain, and 
flowers, have long made it a favorite sketching re- 
sort for artists. The valleys of Mendocino, still far- 
ther north, are smaller, but possess scenery of more 
grandeur, and are remarkable for the number of 
streams that flow through them to the sea. Humboldt 
County, also, has some picturesque valleys, that look 
out upon the sea, or line the bay which bears the 
name of the author of " Cosmos." 

The inner series of Coast Range valleys is the most 
extensive. While the outer valleys are generally sep- 
arated by abrupt and treeless ridges, those inland 
are divided by gentler elevations, which are covered 
by trees or clad with grass and wild oats. The inner 
valleys, again, lie parallel to the trend of the coast. 
They are commonly oblong, nearly level, or rolling 
like the Western prairies, extremely fertile, and have 
a climate more sheltered from the sea-wind and fog. 

3 



34 CALIFORNIAN PICTURES. 

Amono; the most celebrated of these are the So- 
noma, Napa, Santa Rosa, Suisun, Vaca, Berreyesa, and 
Clear Lake, north of the Bay of San Francisco, and 
some of them communicating with it ; and the Ala- 
meda, Santa Clara, Amador, Pajaro, and San Juan, to 
the east or south of the bay. An enumeration of all 
the coast valleys distinctively known, would be a tedi- 
ous task. They are the favorite nestling places of our 
population, as they were the favorite sites of the Mis- 
sion Fathers, and offer examples of the most elaborate 
cultivation, the most contentment, and the greatest 
thrift. Seldom more than three or four miles wide, 
often not more than one, they are in length from five 
to fifty. Their gently rolling surfaces rise into mound- 
like hills on either side, — the best soil for the wine- 
grape, — which in turn are flanked by ridges or peaks 
from five hundred to perhaps three thousand feet high. 
The creeks with their dark green belts of timber, 
often live-oak, wind through continuous harvest-fields. 
Many of the farm-houses are prettily built on knolls 
that command a good view. Nothing can be finer 



MOUNTAIN, LAKE, AND VALLEY. 35 

than the aspect of many of these valleys, when the 
lush verdure of the early spring is prodigally gemmed 
with wild blossoms of the most brilliant colors, or 
when the rich gold of their summer fields, islanded 
with the clumps of evergreen oaks, is contrasted with 
the purple or blue mountain, and the sky at morning 
or evening brightens or fades through tints of amber 
and amethyst. Sometimes the splendor of the setting 
sun seems to penetrate the dark substance of the 
solid hills, and give them a transparent glow, as if 
they yet burned with the heat of their thrusting up. 
As light comes in the spring or summer, the trees are 
vocal with linnets, while larks sing in the fields, and 
chanticleer sounds his horn. As day goes, it is pleas- 
ant to hear the birds calling to repose, the wild doves 
cooing, the quails fondly signaling their mates, the owl 
adding his solemn note to the vespers of the feathered 
tribe. One thinks of the day when a native genera- 
tion will love these mountain-walled valleys, with their 
wealth of varied scenery and resources, as ardently as 
the " pioneers " loved the home-spots which they left 



36 CALIFORNIAN PICTURES. 

in the East or in Europe. Poetry and song and ro- 
mance will come at last to link the spells of imagina- 
tion and fancy to those of memory and affection, and 
" home " will exist here as, in the fond old meanino- 
of the most characteristic English word, it exists now 
for so few. 

The coast valleys are too near the level of the ocean, 
and the mountains surrounding them are too broken, 
to contain many lakes. Few are known which deserve 
description ; but one of these, in Lake County, about 
eighty miles north of San Francisco, is one of the most 
remarkable and lovely in the State. It is called Clear 
Lake, in spite of the fact that, owing to its shallow- 
ness and the easy disturbance of its muddy bottom by 
winds, it is scarcely ever clear. Seen from an elevation, 
however, as it reflects the color of a seldom-clouded 
sky, it loses nothing by comparison with purer sheets 
of water. It is a pity that its Indian name of Lup 
Yomi, whatever its meaning, could not be substituted 
for its present commonplace title. Clear Lake lies in 
a valley between two ridges of the Coast Range, thirty- 



MOUNTAIN, LAKE, AND VALLEY. 2>7 

six miles from the ocean, and has a length of twenty- 
five miles by a width of from two to ten miles. Its 
elevation above the sea is about fifteen hundred feet. 
The region surrounding it is ruggedly mountainous, 
and embraces an ancient volcanic centre. St. Helena, 
at the head of Napa Valley, to the south, and the 
highest peak between San Francisco and the lake, is 
an extinct volcano, and the evidences of its former ac- 
tivity are abundant for many miles in every direction. 
Midway between this peak and the lake are the famous 
geysers, and mineral springs and deposits are frequent 
throughout the whole region. For several miles the 
road approaching the valley from the direction of 
Napa passes over a mountain largely of obsidian. 
The cuttings through this material reveal it boldly ; 
the undisturbed surface is covered with boulders and 
cobbles of it, and in the roadway it is ground into 
pebbles and sand. A deluded person who was con- 
vinced that it was glass and could be readily manu- 
factured, once sank considerable money in a vain 
attempt to convert it into bottles. On the western 



38 CALIFORNIAN PICTURES. 

shore of the lake, not far from the base of this obsid- 
ian mountain, is Borax Lake, a small and shallow 
pond remarkable for the large percentage of borax 
contained in its waters and muddy bed. Extensive 
deposits of sulphur are also found in the vicinity. 
The inclosing ridges are peculiarly rugged, and the 
conical peaks numerous. One of these, called Uncle 
Sam, rises abruptly from the edge of the water to a 
height of twenty-five hundred feet, dividing the lake 
into two parts, Upper and Lower. Near the upper 
end of the lake Mount Ripley attains an elevation of 
three thousand feet, and farther off rises Mount St. 
John, nearly four thousand feet. Still higher peaks, 
on the northeastern side, bearing aboriginal names, 
are often covered with snow, and at such times the 
traveler descending to the lake from the west, and 
seeing these white peaks beyond the blue expanse and 
green margin of meadow and grove, is reminded of 
Switzerland and the Alps. Where not volcanic the 
rocks are cretaceous, and abound in fossils. Ridges 
of serpentine occur, which are richly charged with 



MOUNTAIN, LAKE, AND VALLEY. 39 

quicksilver. Formerly the lake must have filled the 
whole valley, covering even the low ranges of adja- 
cent sand-hills, which afford every mark of recent 
denudation, and are eroded into mound-like forms of 
striking regularity. Upper Lake is nine miles wide; 
Lower Lake is much narrower, but contains several 
pretty rounded islets, bearing a golden harvest of 
wild oats, shaded by orchard-like white oaks, and still 
partly occupied by Indians, who live chiefly on the 
trout, pike, and black fish which they catch in the 
water, and the ducks, geese, and other wild fowl 
which tenant its reedy shores. Deer and bear abound 
in the well-wooded mountains. Several streams put 
into the lake, and one flows from its lower extrem- 
ity, emptying into Cache Creek, a tributary of the 
Sacramento. Northeast of Uncle Sam lies a fine 
valley, the seat of a thrifty community. Its rich loam 
bears a noble growth of ancient and mighty oaks, 
among which nestle sundry villages. 

In the northern part of California, where the Coast 
Range and Sierra Nevada interlock, the system of 



40 CALIFORNIAN PICTURES. 

valleys is confused and difficult to describe. Yet it 
may be said that they preserve the oblong form and 
level surface which characterizes the entire family of 
Pacific valleys. The upper part of the Coast Range 
proper, extending to and including the Humboldt Bay 
country, comprises a noble series of pastoral and agri- 
cultural valleys, watered by streams rich in salmon 
and flanked by mountains which are covered with 
forests of the stately redwood. Some of these valleys 
were the scenes of conflicts with Indians for manv 
years, and owe their sparseness of population partly 
to this cause and partly to their isolation. In rugged 
Trinity County there are only a few small valleys 
along the water-courses. In Klamath County the 
largest valley is Hoopa, thirty miles long and two 
wide, at the junction of Trinity and Klamath rivers. 
Del Norte has a number of small, fertile valleys. Sis- 
kiyou has the largest valleys of any of the northern 
counties. They seem to be intimately connected with 
the plateau east of the Sierra, and to have some of its 
characteristics. Scott Valley, forty miles long by seven 



MOUNTAIN, LAKE, AND VALLEY. 41 

wide, lies between the Trinity and Salmon ranges, 
which are six thousand feet high, the valley itself hav- 
ing an altitude of three thousand feet, and possessing 
a climate more like that of some of the Northern 
States than the lower valleys of California. Surprise 
Valley, in the extreme northeastern part of the State 
and overlying the Nevada boundary, is sixty miles 
long by fifteen wide. It has an elevation even greater 
than Scott Valley, but it is as fertile as it is lovely. 
Its ample surface is finely watered, and covered with 
a rank growth of native clover and grass, on which 
feed immense flocks of wild geese and brant in their 
season. On its east side are three beautiful lakes, 
which extend nearly its whole length, and cover al- 
most half its surface. They contain no fish, but are 
the resort of great quantities of ducks, geese, cranes, 
pelicans, and other wild fowl. They receive a number 
of small streams, but have no outlet. Shasta and Elk 
valleys are lava plains, three thousand to three thou- 
sand seven hundred feet above the sea. They are re- 
markable only for the fine views they command of 



42 CALIFORNIAN PICTURES. 

Mount Shasta, and the former for the numerous small 
volcanic cones that dot its surface. The Shasta re- 
gion is only the southern extremity of that vast vol- 
canic territory which includes the famous Modoc lava 
beds, and which, extending into Idaho and eastern 
Oregon, including the country drained by the Co- 
lumbia and Snake rivers, embraces an area of nearly 
three hundred thousand square miles, which is over- 
laid with lava hundreds and thousands of feet thick, 
covering ancient forests and mammoth skeletons. 

Siskiyou County contains a number of large lakes 
besides those in Surprise Valley. Its total lake 
surface is equal to half a million acres. Klamath 
Lake, the source of Klamath River, lies partly in this 
county and partly in Oregon. Eastward from it, lying 
wholly in Siskiyou, are Goose, Rhett, and Wright 
lakes, which are the sources of several rivers travers- 
ing the northern counties of California, including the 
Trinity, Salmon, and Pitt. The last named river de- 
bouches from Goose Lake, which is thirty miles long 
and sixty wide, and is surrounded by a fertile valley 
of thirty or forty thousand acres. 



MOUNTAIN, LAKE, AND VALLEY. 43 

Leaving Siskiyou, whose vales and plateaus, sterile 
plains of lava, and wide but shallow sheets of water, 
have an elevation of from three thousand to four thou- 
sand feet above the sea, we reach the simple topog- 
raphy of the Sierra, with its regular ridges leading to 
lofty peaks, and divided by profound caiions. Here 
one would scarcely expect to find valleys ; yet there 
are hundreds of small valleys in the lofty chain, many 
of which are inhabited and cultivated. One series of 
valleys, and these are the smallest, lie along the water- 
courses on the western flank of the Sierra, at right 
angles to the trend of the range, and frequently form- 
ing the passes by which it is crossed. Another series 
lie between the double crests of the summit, parallel 
to the trend of the chain. The valleys on the two 
flanks form convenient roadways, and were followed 
by the first emigrants to California'. The famous 
Beckworth, Henness, and Truckee routes across the 
Sierra Nevada all lie throuorh a succession of such 
small intervales, reaching on either side of the Sierra 
to an open and level pass. The Pacific Railroad 



44 



CALIFORNIAN PICTURES. 



crosses the Sierra partly by the aid of these natural 
road-beds, following the course of the Truckee down 




Yosemite Falls, from Glacier Point. 



the eastern slope. The most remarkable of these 
transverse valleys partake of the nature of gorges. 



MOUNTAIN, LAKE, AND VALLEY. 45 

One of them, the Yoscmite, has a world-wide celeb- 
rity. The valley itself is an almost level area, about 
eight miles long and from half a mile to a mile in 
width. Its elevation above the sea is four thousand 
feet, and the cliffs and domes about it are from 
seven thousand to nine thousand feet above the sea, 
with an altitude above the valley of from three to 
five thousand feet. Over these vertical walls of bare 
granite tumble the Merced River and its forks. Most 
of the caiions and valleys of the Sierra have resulted 
from denudation, and some have been partly shaped 
and marked by glaciers ; but Professor Whitney thinks 
that this mighty chasm has been roughly hewn in its 
present form by the same kind of forces which have 
raised the crest of tlie Sierra and moulded the surface 
into something like their present shape. He conceives 
the domes were formed by the process of upheaval 
itself, and says that the half dome was split asunder 
in the middle, the lost half having gone down in what 
may truly have been said to have been " the wreck of 
matter and the crash of worlds." John Muir, who 



46 CALJFORNIAN PICTURES. 

combines the feeling of a poet with the patient obser- 
vation of a scientist, and who spent several years of re- 
search in this part of the Sierra, contends, on the con- 
trary, that glacial action was the main force which 
sculptured this wonderful fane of nature. Another 
gorge, which is inferior only to the Yosemite, is found 
at the sources of the Tuolumne River, still farther in 
the heart of the Sierra. Its vertical cliffs would be 
unique in the mountain scenery of the world, were 
Yosemite unknown. It is here that the tourist ap- 
proaches the Alpine region of California. The sum- 
mit of the pass leading into Tuolumne Vall-ey is nine 
thousand and seventy feet above the sea, and the de- 
scent to the river is only about five hundred feet. 
Tenaya Valley, between Yosemite and Tuolumne, con- 
tains a beautiful lake by the same name, a mile long 
and half a mile wide. A high ridge near this lake 
commands a fine view of Cathedral Peak, which Pro- 
fessor Whitney describes as a lofty ridge of rock cut 
down squarely for more than one thousand feet on all 
sides, and with a cluster of pinnacles at one end, rising 



MOUNTAIN, LAKE, AND VALLEY. 47 

several hundred feet above the rest of the mass. It 
is at least two thousand five hundred feet above the 
surrounding plateau ahd eleven thousand feet above 
the sea. At the head of Lake Tenaya rises a conical 
knob of bare granite, eight hundred feet high, its sides 
finely polished and grooved by former glaciers. The 
upper Tuolumne drains a richly turfed valley half a 
mile or a mile wide, and fifteen miles long, and con- 
taining some noted soda springs. The valley has an 
elevation of from eight thousand six hundred to nine 
thousand eight hundred feet. In this vicinity are the 
most remarkable evidences of the former glacial sys- 
tem of California. The whole region rapidly rises till 
it meets the dominating peaks of the King's River 
country. 

The highest of the transverse valleys is Mono Pass, 
which is ten thousand seven hundred and sixty feet 
above the sea; and the most elevated pass used by 
travelers is the Union. In a canon at the eastern 
side of this pass are several small lakes, not less than 
seven thousand feet above the sea, which are pro- 



4^ CALIFORNIAN PICTURES. 

duced, like many of the lakes of the high Sierra, by 
the damming of the gorge by the terminal moraines 
left by the retreating glaciers. Mount Dana is the 
culminating point of the Sierra in the region of the 
upper Tuolumne. It has an altitude of thirteen thou- 
sand two hundred and twenty-seven feet. To the east 
of it, only six miles, but nearly seven thousand feet 
below, lies Mono Lake, a body of water fourteen miles 
long from east to west, and nine miles wide, highly 
charged with mineral salts, void of all life except the 
countless larvae of a small fly, sluggish and dreary 
in appearance, and surrounded by strong tokens of 
smouldering volcanic agencies, among which is a clus- 
ter of truncated cones. 

Below the region of the high Sierra in Southern 
California, the valleys or table-lands connect with the 
Nevada plateau, or Great Basin, and are mainly of 
the same character — arid, alkaline, and barren. The 
streams flowing east or west are bordered by narrow 
strips of level land, supporting tuft grasses, willows, 
and cottonwoods, but offering little inducement for 



MOUNTAIN, LAKE, AND VALLEY. 49 

settlement. There are numerous salt lakes and ponds. 
The largest of these is Owen's Lake, twenty-two miles 
long and eight wide. In the same region, lying partly 
in San Bernardino and partly in Inyo counties, be- 
tween Owen's Lake and the Nevada line, is Death 
Valley. This remarkable depression is the lower sink 
of the Amargosa River, and, although situated in the 
high Sierra, it is actually one hundred and fifty feet 
below the level of the sea. The soil is a thick bed of 
salt, and, doubtless, the depression was formerly occu- 
pied by a lake. All the salt lakes of the region we 
have described have marked in terraces their former 
larger dimensions, and are evidently in process of 
gradual extinction. This portion of the Sierra has 
been frequently disturbed by violent earthquakes 
within a few years past. Some of these shocks have 
been followed by a rise in the waters of Owen's Lake, 
which continued until it had overflowed thousands of 
acres, and then suddenly abated, the lake resuming 
its usual size. 

While the valleys and lakes of the Tuolumne and 
4 



50 CALIFORNIAN PICTURES. 

King's River region present altogether the strongest 
and grandest features, those between this region and 
the sources of Feather River northward are the most 
pleasant. All the rivers in this stretch of coun- 
try flow partly through small valleys ; but the larger 
valleys are those of the summit, lying between the 
crests of the Sierra, or on its flank, from three thou- 
and to seven thousand feet above sea level, while the 
ridges that inclose them on the east and west rise 
from one thousand five hundred to three thousand 
feet higher. The largest of these valleys lie at the 
sources of the Feather River, in Plumas and Lassen 
counties, connecting with easy approaches from the 
Nevada plateau, and offering low and comparatively 
snowless passes for winter transit of the mountain. 
Honey Lake Valley, in Lassen, contains about twenty 
thousand acres of meadow and arable land, is one of 
the lowest in altitude, and possesses a mild winter 
climate. The lake from which it is named is twelve 
by five miles in dimensions, of irregular form, and 
constantly decreasing size. It is really an independ- 



MOUNTAIN, LAKE, AND VALLEY. 5 1 

ent basin, lying east of the Sierra crests, and receives 
the water of two rivers. The valley is sixty miles 
long by fifteen to twenty wide. It is named from the 
quantity of honey-like liquid deposited plentifully on 
the grass and shrubs by a species of bee peculiar to 
dry and barren countries. Eagle Valley contains a 
shallow and irregular lake, about twelve miles long by 
eight wide. Long Valley, in the southern part of the 
county, is about forty miles long by two or three wide, 
quite level, and notable for its superior pasturage. 
Southward of this valley, the summit valleys decrease 
in size with increase of altitude. While the Lassen 
and Plumas valleys are only from three thousand to 
four thousand feet above the sea, those in Sierra, Ne- 
vada, Placer, El Dorado, and other counties to the 
southward, are from five thousand to seven thousand 
feet high. A third small lake in Lassen, called Sum- 
mit Lake, has an altitude of five thousand eight hun- 
dred feet, with a little strip of level land. Plumas 
contains nearly a score of valleys that are fertile, 
sheltered, and populous, lying on the upper tribu- 



52 CALIFORNIAN PICTURES. 

taries of Feather River, and embracing an aggregate 
of nearly two hundred and fifty thousand acres of good 
land. The snows are light in these valleys. 

All the lesser summit valleys have characteristics in 
common, varying chiefly as to size and altitude. They 
are usually long and narrow, covered with a luxuriant 
growth of natural grasses, watered by small willow- 
fringed streams that flow either west or east, gemmed 
by small lakes, and framed by more or less rugged 
ridges, bearing thick forests of pine and fir to near 
their summits, which are bare crags of gray granite, 
covered for a great part of the year with snow. The 
discovery of silver in Nevada, in 1859, and the subse- 
quent settlement of that State, brought these valleys 
into notice and use. Before that event, they were 
mostly resorted to by drovers for summer pasturage, 
cattle being driven thither from the parched plains of 
California in summer, and brought back on the ap- 
proach of winter. At a later day their grasses were 
■cut for hay, to be sold in Nevada, and to w^ay-travelers. 
Many of them lay directly in the numerous routes 



MOUNTAIN, LAKE, AND VALLEY. 53 

leading from California to the silver regions, and began 
to be appropriated by settlers for ranching and lumber 
purposes. Finally the building of the Pacific Railroad 
has given many of them special value, and some of 
them are becoming places of great resort for summer 
tourists, invalids, and artists. It is certain that most of 
them will soon be occupied by permanent commu- 
nities, and that the Sierra Nevada will ultimately 
contribute a stream of hardy life to counteract the 
enervating effect of extreme heat in the lowlands of 
California. Their summer climate is delightfully tem- 
perate and bracing ; their winter climate cold, but sel- 
dom extremely so. Those which are most sheltered, 
and not too high, produce whatever will mature in 
New England. In others, the growing season is too 
short for much effective cultivation; but lumbering, 
mining, and quarrying will furnish employmenf for 
considerable settlements, and markets for the products 
of more favorable spots. 

The most attractive feature of the lesser summit 
valleys is their multitude of clear, fresh lakes, stocked 



54 CALIFORNIAN PICTURES. 

with the finest trout, surrounded by magnificent groves 
of pine and fir, reflecting snowy peaks, and beautiful 
with all the colors of changing day and evening. Con- 
cerning this charming feature, less has been reported 
than of any other. A standard authority on the phys- 
ical features of California has even made the broad 
assertion that the Sierra Nevada contains very few 
lakes. This mistake was natural ; for, aside from the 
singular salt or alkali lakes in the volcanic regions 
of the Sierra, north and south, together with the few 
laro-e fresh-water lakes already enumerated in this 
article, the lakes of the Sierra have not been mapped 
or described. On no popular chart of this range are 
more than twenty or thirty lakes indicated, whereas 
the existence of at least two hundred, in a distance of 
four hundred miles, from Siskiyou to Kern, can be 
positively vouched for ; and this number is probably 
within the truth, as it will be developed by future ex- 
plorations. These lakes are the sources of the nu- 
merous rivers that have eroded the deep canons of 
the western slope, and of the few which flow eastward. 



MOUNTAIN, LAKE, AND VALLEY. 55 

They are the reservoirs of the nielting snows — the 
sources of summer supply for hundreds of miles of 
mining ditches. Some are sunk deep in rocky chasms, 
without level or meadow land surrounding them. 
Others have been formed by glacial moraines dam- 
ming up the gorges that would else have been only 
the channel of streams. Nearly all have been larger 
and deeper than now. Some are no larger than the 
petty tarns of the English hills ; while others would 
float a navy, and can mimic the commotion of the sea. 
Sierra County contains twenty or more small lakes, 
situated in the depressions of the summit, generally 
circular in form, from half a mile to a mile across, 
and varying in depth from a few feet to ten or twenty 
fathoms. The largest. Gold Lake, about four miles 
long by two wide, is famous as the scene of falsely 
reported deposits of lump gold, which, in 1849-50, 
attracted and disappointed a multitude of miners. 
Nevada County, next adjoining Sierra on the south, 
is still richer in lakes, containing at least thirty. Four 
of these are notable as the sources of supply for one 



5t> CALIFORNIAN PICTURES. 

of the most extensive mining canals in the State, — 
that of the Eureka Lake and Yuba Canal Company. 
The trunk canal of this company is sixty-five miles 
long. Its principal supply reservoir is Eureka Lake. 
This originally had an area of only one square mile, 
but an artificial dam of granite across the outlet, one 
hundred and twenty feet long at the base, two hundred 
and fifty feet long at the top, and seventy feet deep, 
has doubled the surface of the lake, and oriven it an 
average depth of sixty-five feet. Lake Faucherie, 
with a wooden dam thirty feet high, floods two hun- 
dred acres. Two smaller lakes with these feed a 
canal eight feet wide by three and a half feet deep, 
and furnish water for some of the heaviest deep- 
gravel mining in the State. The South Yuba Canal 
Company has utilized five lakes in another part of 
Nevada County. One of these, Meadow Lake, is 
enlarged by a solid masonry dam, which is forty-two 
feet high and eleven hundred and fifty feet long, and 
makes, when full, a sheet about two miles long by 
half a mile wide, with a depth varying, according to 



MOUNTAIN, LAKE, AND VALLEY. 57 

the season, from ten to thirty fathoms. Seven miles 
in a southeasterly direction are White Rock, Devil's 
Peak, and two smaller lakes which, jointly, equal the 
capacity of Meadow Lake. Devil's Peak Lake lies 
close to the Pacific Railroad. These reservoirs are 
drawn into the channel of the South Yuba, when 
that stream runs low in the summer, and thence pass 
through fifty miles of ditching. 

The works of the two companies named cost an 
aggregate of several million dollars. When they cease 
to be wanted for mining purposes, they will serve to 
irrigate countless gardens and vineyards on the lower 
slopes of the Sierra. Meadow Lake gives a name to 
a large township which is remarkable for being one of 
the highest minino- localities in California, as for the 
great size and number of its gold and silver ledges. 
The general altitude of the district is from seven thou- 
sand to eight thousand feet, and contains about twenty 
lakes. Snow fell there in the winter of 1866-67 to 
the depth of twenty-five feet, yet many daring people 
remained and mined through the season, and several 



58 CALIFORNIAN PICTURES. 

towns are growing up. Within the district are Crystal 
and Donner lakes — the former one of the most pict- 
uresque resorts in the Sierra; the latter having a 
beauty of another kind, and being remarkable as the 
scene of a painful tragedy in the early settlement of 
the State. Donner Lake is three miles long by one 
wide. It lies in sight from the eastern end of the 
summit tunnel of the Central Pacific Railroad, one 
thousand five hundred feet below that point and five 
thousand five hundred feet above the sea. A small 
stream pours from it into the Truckee River, only 
three miles eastward, watering a narrow valley. Here, 
late in October, 1846, a party of eighty overland im- 
migrants, under the lead of Captain Donner, and in- 
cluding over thirty women and children, were over- 
taken by a snow-storm, which prevented them from 
proceeding. They suffered terribly in their winter 
camp, or while wandering blindly searching an outlet, 
until found by relief parties from the western side of 
the mountains, in February. In the sequel, thirty- 
seven perished from exposure and hunger, and some 



MOUNTAIN, LAKE, AND VALLEY. 59 

of the party were only sustained by the last dreadful 
resort of starving humanity. The locomotive now al- 
most hourly passes the scene of this tragedy, awak- 
ing clanging echoes among the dizzy cliffs of bare 
granite through which its way is cut. Hundreds of 
people live in or about the valley the whole year; and 
hard by thirty saw-mills are busy thinning out the 
noble forests that deck the steep slopes on every side. 
A congreries of small lakes is found to the south- 
ward of the Pacific Railroad where it crosses the sum- 
mit, each of which has its peculiar charms, and its 
special friends among the tourists, who begin to seek 
these sylvan sheets through the warm season. They 
lie from six thousand to seven thousand feet above 
the level of the sea, where the snow falls commonly 
ten feet deep, and stays from November or December 
until July, with lingering patches sometimes on the 
peaks above until the next winter. Some of these 
lakes are appropriated for ice supplies to the lower 
country. Rude hotels have been erected near a few, 
to accommodate the visitors who go there to fish, 
sail, sketch, and recuperate. 



6o CALIFORNIAN PICTURES. 

All the lakes of Sierra and Nevada counties, except 
one or two, — like Donner, which lies on the eastern 
side of the summit, or Truckee, which is just over the 
line of gradual eastern descent in the Henness Pass, 
and feeds Little Truckee River, — are sources of the 
numerous tributary streams that feed and form the 
Yuba River, or the northern forks of the American. 
Another congeries of small lakes in Placer and El 
Dorado counties feed the larger forks of the American 
and Cosumnes, and supply an extensive system of 
mining canals. The South Fork Canal, one of the 
largest of these works, having a length of one hundred 
and forty-two and a half miles, is partly supplied from 
Silver, Red, and Willow lakes, which store up together 
nearly three hundred and fifty million cubic feet of 
water. Some of this goes to irrigate the vineyards for 
which the high, red hills of El Dorado are becoming 
celebrated. Through the whole middle tier of mining 
counties, from Siskiyou to Mariposa, the summit lakes 
are more or less drawn upon to fill artificial channels, 
and aid in the extraction of gold and the cultivation 



MOUNTAIN, LAKE, AND VALLEY. 6 1 

of the soil. Their names make a long list, and sug- 
gest their picturesque qualities, — as Silver, Crystal, 
Cascade, Emerald, Grass, Fallen Leaf, Tule, Willow, 
Mirror, Alder, Palisade, etc. Many are named from 
the peaks that overlook them, from the wild animals 
or birds that frequent them, from the circumstances 
of their discovery, or from the persons who first took 
up abodes near them. The most extensive and cele- 
brated of the whole group is Lake Tahoe, in El Do- 
rado County, only fifteen miles southwardly from Con- 
ner Lake and the line of the Central Pacific Railroad. 
Its elevation above the sea, exceeding six thousand 
feet; its great depth, reaching a maximum of more 
than one thousand five hundred feet ; its exquisite 
purity and beauty of color ; the grandeur of its snowy 
mountain walls; its fine beaches and shore groves of 
pine, — make it the most picturesque and attractive of 
all the California lakes. Profound as it is, it is won- 
derfully transparent, and the sensation upon floating 
over and gazing into its still bosom, where the granite 
boulders can be seen far, far below, and large trout 



62 CALIFORNIAN PICTURES. 

dart swiftly, incapable of concealment, is almost akin 
to that one might feel in a balloon above the earth. 
The color of the water changes with its depth, from 
a light, bluish green, near the shore, to a darker green, 
farther out, and finally to a blue so deep that artists 
hardly dare put it on canvas. When the lake is still, 
it is one of the loveliest sights conceivable, flashing 
silvery in the sun, or mocking all the colors of the 
sky, while the sound of its soft beating on the beach 
is like the music of the sea-shell. When the wind 
angers its surface, its waves are dangerous to buffet. 
The sail that would float over its still face like a 
cloud is then driven like fate, and is lucky to escape 
destruction. Sometimes the dense ranks of tall pines, 
firs, and cedars extend to the shore and are reflected 
in the placid sheet. There is always some new beauty 
to see, and one scarcely knows which is most delight- 
ful, — to float over the deep blue element that kisses 
his bark, or to wander along the sandy beach and 
through the surrounding woods, thinking of the power 
that reared this noble range and gemmed its deep 
gorges with such scenes of witchery. 



A MEMORY OF. THE SIERRA. 



My heart is in the mountains, where 
They stand afar in purple air. 
Up to their peaks and snowy founts 
In happy dreams my spirit mounts. 
Their ridges stretch unto the plain, 
Like arms, to draw me up again ; 
The plain itself a pathway is 
To lead me to remembered bliss. 

I hear the brown larks tune their lay, 
And little linnets, brown as they. 
Fill up the intervals with sweet 
Enticement to their green retreat. 
I hear the wild dove's note forlorn. 
The piping quail beneath the thorn, 
The squirrel's busy chip and stir. 
The grouse's sudden heavy whir, 



6/| CALIFORNIAN PICTURES. 

The cawing of the white-winged crow, 
And chatter of the jays below. 

I stand within the cloistered shade 
By columned fir and cedar made, 
And up the minster-mocking pine 
I gaze along the plummet line 
Of mighty trunks, whose leafy tops 
Distill a spray of diamond drops, 
Whene'er the sunlight chances through 
Their high mosaic of green and blue. 
I hear a sound that seems to be 
An inland murmur of the sea, 
Yet know it is the tuneful moan 
Of wind-touched forest harps alone. 

I wander to the dizzy steep 

That plunges into caiion deep. 

And where the obscuring hazes hint 

The amethyst and violet's tint. 

I see along the cloudless sky 

My dear-loved peaks, serene and high - 

So cold at morn, but warmly bright 

With flushes of the evenin.": lijiht. 



A MEMORY OF THE SIERRA. 65 

The very eagles hate to leave 
These heights subUme, but fondly cleave 
In circling flights about the crests 
Where they have built their lonely nests. 

Perched on these crags, the world below 
Melts in the hazy summer's glow ; 
Hid are its gloomy sounds and sights 
From all who reach these templed heights, 
Where, Moses-like, the soul bespeaks 
The highest good its rapture seeks. 



UP THE WESTERN SLOPE. 



The grandest of all the mountain ranges on the 
western side of the United States is the Sierra Nevada. 
This range from Mount Shasta, at the north, where it 
blends with the Coast Range, to Mount Whitney, at 
the south, beyond which point it breaks off into irregu- 
lar formations that finally slope to the deserts, is about 
five hundred miles long. Its western slope, which is 
at least one hundred miles long on any grade fit for 
travel, is covered below an elevation of seven thousand 
feet with the most magnificent coniferous forests on 
the continent, embracing the wonderful groves of Se- 
quoia gigantea. These forests extend to the foot-hill 
region, a belt of gently rounded mountains and level 
table-lands, where the prevailing larger growths are 



UP THE WESTERN SLOPE. 67 

deciduous and evergreen oaks, the digger or nut pine, 
ceanothus, syringa, manzanita, buckeye, and poison- 
oak. The foot-hills gradually melt into the broad 
plains of the Sacramento and San Joaquin, only fifty 
or sixty feet above tide-level, which sweep their flat 
surfaces of emerald or golden harvests clear to the 
base of the purple Coast Range, rising hazy in the 
distant air of the Pacific. This placid region suc- 
ceeds the tumultuous ruggedness of the higher ridges 
like a calm after a storm. Until the lower foot-hills 
are reached, the Sierra Nevada, on this slope, seems 
to break down in long, regular ridges, the outlines of 
which, at right angles to the trend of the range, are 
drawn straightly across the sky, presenting massive 
but precise forms, more grand than picturesque. But 
these ridges are divided by cafions eroded by ice and 
water, having a depth of one thousand to three thou- 
sand or four thousand feet, whose walls are often 
precipitous cliffs, and, even where clad with soil and 
forest, usually very steep. These cafions, with the 
streams which flow through them, head up in the 



68 CALIFORNIAN PICTURES. 

snowy summit of the range, where they often open 
into meadow valleys, as the summit itself, double- 
crested along much of its course, holds still larger 
valleys, which open into the great plateau of Nevada 
at either extremity of the range. While the general 
elevation is from seven thousand to ten thousand feet, 
it is crowned by a multitude of peaks which reach 
altitudes all the way from eleven thousand to fifteen 
thousand feet, and on which the snow never entirely 
melts. Composed of splintered crags of granite, 
where the granite is not overlaid by even more irregu- 
larly cut volcanic rocks, the sky outline of the snowy 
summit is sharply serrated. Hence the Spanish name 
of Sierra Nevada, even more appropriate to this range 
than to that lesser one in Granada which originally 
bore it. 

The comparatively timberless eastern slope of the 
Sierra Nevada, with its infrequent streams and monot- 
onous gray stretches of wild sage, plunges abruptly 
down to the Nevada plateau. A descent of about two 
thousand five hundred feet, in a distance of fifty miles. 



UP THE WESTERN SLOPE. 69 

is all there is of this slope, the plateau itself having an 
elevation of four thousand or five thousand feet and 
extending with its irregular mineral ridges to the Salt 
Lake basin and the Rocky Mountains. Thus on one 
side of the Sierra Nevada are verdure and fertility, 
— the summer charm of a semi-tropical clime, with its 
varied and abundant products, its poetic beauty of 
scenery, and its keenly sensuous joy in vitality ; while 
on the other are barrenness and sterility, naked mount- 
ains, monotonous and often desert plains, where nat- 
ure looks desperately unfinished, and gives every sign 
of rigorous struggle, without amenity or repose. The 
traveler from the east enjoys this vivid contrast so 
quickly realized — this rapid exchange of arid wastes 
for luxuriant woods and fields ; but the transition 
going from the west chills and depresses, except at 
evening, when the sage-brush plains and treeless 
mountains of Nevada are transformed by the alchemy 
of color, and kindle into beauty. Probably the pas- 
sage of no other mountain range of equal magnitude 
affords so much scenic enjoyment, at so slight an ex- 



70 CALIFORNIAN PICTURES. 

penditure of energy, as the Pacific Railroad makes 
daily practicable. To know the summit of the range 
thoroughly, one must of course leave the railroad — 
must explore on horseback and afoot the wonder- 
ful gorge of Yosemite, and the equally wonderful 
Tuolumne canon, with the lesser Yosemite, Hetch- 
Hetchy ; must go to the Kern River region, where 
a hundred peaks rise from twelve thousand to four- 
teen thousand feet, and Mount Whitney soars one 
thousand feet higher, overtopping Shasta and every 
other peak in the United States outside of Alaska, 
unless the Colorado Mountains shall prove to contain 
a higher point; and must also go to Mount Lassen 
with its ancient crater and hot lakelet, and to the 
isolated cone of Shasta, most lovely and interesting 
of all the great peaks. But the railroad summit pre- 
sents enough of the grand and picturesque, and suffi- 
ciently illustrates the character of the range, to repay 
a special trip, if that were the only one the tourist 
should make to the high Sierra. 

Leaving Sacramento, rimmed about with its iron- 



UP THE WESTERN SLOPE. 7 1 

clad levee and fringes of willow thicket, only fifty- 
six feet above the tide-level, the Central Pacific Rail- 
road reaches the first swell of the Sierra within eight 
miles to the eastward, and in one hundred and five 
miles makes the summit in Donner Pass, seven thou- 
sand and forty-two feet above the sea. In the spring 
— say from February or March to June — a trip to 
the summit is especially striking for the sharp con- 
trast between the Eden-like beauty of the lower coun- 
try and the Arctic pallor of the region within the 
snow-belt. The plains of Sacramento, where they are 
not broken with the plow or sown with grain, are cov- 
ered with a profuse growth of many-colored wild flow- 
ers, most brilliant of which is the California poppy {Pa- 
pavera Eschscholtzia), whose deep orange cups flame 
out in sunny splendor where they are massed in large 
tracts, and are seen in glowing contrast by patches 
of blue lupin and larkspur. On this gay parterre 
flourish at intervals park-like groves of large oaks, 
deciduous and evergreen, with huge bunches of mis- 
tletoe tangled in their leafy tresses, their gray trunks 



72 CALIFORNIAN PICTURES. 

circled at the base with flowers that court their shade, 
recalHng the m3^th of the fairy dancing-ring. The 
common brown meadow-lark, and the equally plain 
linnet, make these gay scenes vocal with unfailing 
song. The atmosphere is singularly clear and pure ; 
the sky a soft and tender blue, suggestive of infinite 
space ; 'the whole influence of the landscape and the 
season intoxicating. And the floral profusion extends 
to the rolling foot-hills, albeit the reddish tint of the 
soil shows through its vernal dressing, and a few low- 
land pines begin to dispute the sway of the smaller 
oaks. The ceanothus, or California lilac, with its 
honey-breathing bloom, here comes in a thick under- 
brush, mixed with the manzanita, whose smooth limbs 
are as red as a cherry, and whose thick leaves are as 
stiff" as wax. Groups of buckeye rise in higher masses 
of lighter green, relieved by spikes of small blossoms, 
that bristle all over them. 

This is pretty much the character of the Sierra 
foot-hills up to the edge of the snow-line, say twenty- 
five hundred to three thousand feet above the sea, 



UP THE WESTERN SLOPE. IZ 

where becrin the coniferous woods which stretch up 
to the base of the highest peaks, and where one gets 
the first fine outlook over the wild valleys below, the 
first glimpses of blue canon on either side, and the 
first view of those long straight ridges which lead up 
to the crest of the range by gradations at once easy 
and stupendous. During the spring months the veg- 
etation between the plains and the coniferous belt is 
very bright and fresh, and there is no dust. Later, 
when shrub and grass are dry and russet-colored, 
and the red or brown soil rises in clouds, making 
the hot air oppressive to the traveler, there is a pre- 
vaiHno- olive color in the underbrush, and even in 
the trees, especially the oaks, until the pines and firs 
lift their tops in lofty bowers of fresh and vivid green, 
carpeting the soil softly with their needles, while their 
cuir-colored trunks form stately colonnades, through 
which the sun shoots long beams of gold rayed like 
the chariot-wheels of Phoebus. 

The portion of the lower Sierra thus far sketched 
is the region of the gold deposits. Here lie those 



74 CALIFORNIAN PICTURES. 

great bands of slate, veined with quartz, whose degra- 
dation was the source of the precious metal distributed 
through the overlying drift, in the channels of modern 
streams, in the beds of ravines, and on the summits 
and slopes of hills. Here the chocolate-colored riv- 
ers, choked for a hundred feet deep with mining de- 
bris, attest the destructive activity of the gold-hunters. 
Every ravine and gulch has been sluiced into deeper 
ruts or filled with washings from above. Lofty ridges 
have been stripped of auriferous gravel for several 
continuous miles together, to a depth of from one 
hundred to two hundred feet. Cataracts of mud have 
replaced these foaming cascades which used to gleam 
like snow in the primeval woods. And the woods 
have, alas ! in too many cases, been quite obliterated 
by the insatiate miner. But it is pleasant to observe 
how nature seeks to heal the wounds inflicted by man ; 
how she recreates soil, renews vegetation, and draws 
over the ugly scars of twenty years a fresh mantle of 
verdure and bloom. Extensive groves of young pines 
and cedars are flourishing on the sites of the old 



UP THE WESTERN SLOPE. 75 

forests, along the course of water ditches, and even in 
the chasms of decaying granite and piled up boulders 
and cobbles left by the miner. Small basins and 
valleys once covered or filled with mining litter are 
coating over with grass and grain, and in some in- 
stances have been converted into garden spots. In- 
deed, many of the old mining camps are now more 
noted and valuable for their orchards and vineyards 
than for their gold product. The rude log-cabin has 
given way to the vine-clad cottage, and the oleander 
blooms before doorways where once the only shrub 
may have been the pretty but noxious poison-oak. 
Coloma, where gold was first discovered in 1848, and 
where five thousand men dug for it once, is now a 
sleepy little village of horticulturists and vintners, 
embosomed in sloping hill-side vineyards, its "sa- 
loons " abandoned to the rats, and its jail converted 
into a wine-cellar. On the very verge of deep hy- 
draulic diggings cling thrifty orchards. The peach, 
the fig, and the prickly pear are rivals in luxuriant 
bearing, clear up to the line of winter snow, and even 



76 CALIFORNIAN PICTURES. 

the orange grows, where it has been tried, two thou- 
sand five hundred feet above the sea. Ditches cut at 
great expense to bring water to the diggings now 
serve to irrigate gardens, orchards, and vineyards. 
Even the rapidly passing railway traveler catches 
suggestive glimpses of all these changes, betokening 
the new era of permanent settlement and culture 
which is coming to the rude places of old. 

Yet it is a relief to get out of sight of the crater- 
like chasms left by the miner, with their pinky chalk- 
cliffs of ancient drift, along which the cars fly as 
over a parapet or wall. It is pleasant to quit the hills 
denuded of timber and left so desolate in their dusty 
brown ; delightful to reach loftier ridges and plunge 
into cool shades of spicy pine. Here nature seems 
to reassert herself as in the time of her unbroken 
solitude, when the trees grew, and flowers bloomed, 
and birds caroled ; when the bright cataracts leaped 
in song, and the hazy canon walls rose in softened 
grandeur, indifferent to the absence of civilized man ; 
though the civilization which has made these superb 



UP THE WESTERN SLOPE. 77 

heights so easily accessible for our enjoyment is not 
to be scorned. The rocky promontories, jutting into 
blue abysses, and giving sublime pictures of mountain 
lines sweeping down to the plain, are finer for the 
iron rail which lies along their dizzy edges, surpassing 
the Appian Way of the Romans, or the Alpine Road 
of Napoleon. Here we have the sensation of balloon- 
ing without its dangers. Flying over deep gulches 
on tresdes one hundred feet high, and along the verge 
of canons two thousand feet deep, we look out on the 
air and view the landscape as from a perch in the sky. 
Thus is the picturesque made easy, and thus mechan- 
ical eenius lends itself to the fine wants of the soul. 
Reaching the deep snow-belt, however, the vision of 
mountain scenery is cut off by the many miles of 
snow-sheds, or, at best, is only caught in snatches 
provokingly brief, as the train dashes by an occasional 
opening. If the time is winter, the shed is enveloped 
in snow from ten to twenty feet deep; the light 
gleams feebly as through diaphanous shell, and the 
smoke-blackened interior is in sharp contrast to the 



78 CALIFORNIAN PICTURES. 

white drifts seen through chinks and sHts. A ride 
through these winding galleries at this season is weird 
enough, and the rare glimpses without reveal a scene 
thoroughly arctic. The woods are grand with their 
drooping plumes, — white on the upper, green on 
the lower surface, — and the massive trunks are clad 
on one side with a thick garment of greenish-yel- 
low moss extending to the limbs, which often trail 
long pendants of gray or black moss from bark or 
foliage. Higher up, the treeless peaks and slopes of 
granite, dazzlingly white, send down roaring torrents. 
The sea-murmur of the forest has ceased ; there is a 
hush in the air except for the roar of waters. The 
cushion of snow prevents reverberation, and muffles 
the harp of the summer-sounding pine. Here and 
there in the sheds are cavernous side-openings, which 
indicate snow-buried stations or towns, where stand 
waiting groups of men, who receive daily supplies — 
even to the daily newspaper — in this strange region. 
The railroad is the raven that feeds them. Without 
it these winter wildernesses would be uninhabitable. 



UP THE WESTERN SLOPE. 79 

When the train has passed, they walk through snow- 
tunnels or smaller sheds to their cabins, which give no 
hint of their presence but for the shaft of begrimed 
snow where the chimney-smoke curls up. And in 
these subnivean abodes dwell the station and section 
people, and the lumbermen, during several months, 
until the snow melts and its glaring monotony of 
white is suddenly succeeded by grass and flowers, 
except where the granite crests hold the snow longer, 
and seldom bear richer vegetation than lichens and 
a few straggling dwarfs of pine or cedar. 

Nothing can be more charming than the woods of 
the Sierra summit in June, July, and August, espe- 
cially in the level glades margining the open sum- 
mit valleys, at an elevation of from six thousand to 
seven thousand feet. The pines and firs, prevailing 
over spruces and cedars, attain a height ranging from 
one hundred to two hundred feet, and even more. 
Their trunks are perfectly straight, limbless for fifty 
to a hundred feet, painted above the snow-mark with 
yellow mosses, and ranged in open park-like groups, 



8o CALIFORNIA^ PICTURES. 

affording far vistas. The soil may be thin, but it is 
soft and springy to the tread, covered with needles 
of the pine, greened with tender grasses and vines, 
and thickly sprinkled with blossoms. Huge boulders 
of granite relieve the vernal coloring with their pict- 
uresque mosses of gray, starred with lichens. These 
rocks are often hid in vines or in dw^arf oaks and man- 
zanitas, which, under the pressure of deep snow, as- 
sume a vine-like growth, winding about a boulder with 
their clinging and sinuous small branches. Thickets 
of wild rose and other flowering shrubs occur at in- 
tervals, giving an almost artistic variety to the wood- 
land scene. The crimson snow-plant lifts its slender 
shaft of curious beauty. Large patches of helianthus 
— some species with very broad leaves — spread their 
sunflowers to the air. Sparkling springs, fresh from 
snowy fountains, silver-streak these forest meadows, 
where birds come to bathe and drink, and tracks of 
the returning deer are printed. Once more the quail 
is heard piping to its mates, the heavy whirring flight 
of the grouse startles the meditative rambler, and 



UP THE WESTERN SLOPE. 8 1 

the pines give forth again their surf-Hke roar to the 
passing breeze, waving their plumed tops in slow and 
graceful curves across a sky wonderfully clear and 
blue. To the citizen weary of sordid toil and de- 
pressed by long exile from nature, there is an in- 
fluence in these elevated groves which both soothes 
and excites. Here beauty and happiness seem to 
be the rule, and care is banished. The feast of color, 
the keen, pure atmosphere, the deep, bright heavens, 
the grand peaks bounding the view, are intoxicating. 
There is a sense of freedom, and the step becomes 
elastic and quick under the new feeling of self-owner- 
ship. Love for all created things fills the soul as 
never before. One listens to the birds as to friends, 
and would fain cultivate with them a close intimacy. 
The water-fall has a voice full of meaning. The 
wild rose tempts the mouth to kisses, and the trees 
and rocks solicit an embrace. We are in harmony 
with the dear mother on whom we had turned our 
backs so long, yet who receives us with a welcome 
unalloyed by reproaches. The spirit worships in an 



82 CALIFORNIAN PICTURES. 

ecstacy of reverence. This is the Madonna of a re- 
ligion without dogma, whose creed is written only in 
the hieroglyphics of beauty, voiced only in the triple 
language of color, form, and sound. 

Let the pilgrim to these Sierra shrines avoid the 
hucksters who carry traffic into the temple. Let 
him leave the beaten line of travel, where the ravag- 
ing axe converts the umbrageous solitude into noisy 
blanks. Let him quit the scene where sawdust chokes 
and stains the icy streams in their beds of boulders. 
All things have their place, and these are well in 
their way, but are only an offense to the true lover 
of nature. Plunge into the unbroken forests — into 
the deep cafions ; climb the high peaks ; be alone 
a while and free. Look into nature, as well as at nat- 
ure, so that the enjoyment shall be not merely sen- 
suous but intellectual. A less exclusive and jealous 
pilgrimage than this, however, will make a man bet- 
ter, physically and mentally. He will realize from it 
the truth of Tyndall 's testimony to the value of high 
mountain exercise in restoring wasted nervous en- 



UP THE WESTERN SLOPE. 83 

ergy and reviving the zest and capacity for brain 
work. He will find in it a moral tonic as well, and 
come back to the world, not loving men better, per- 
haps, but more patient and tolerant, more willing to 
accept work with them as being itself better than 
the thing worked for. 



SUNRISE NEAR HENNESS PASS. 



The moon is streaming down her mellow light 

Upon the snowy summits of the range 

That walls apart the gold and silver lands. 

It gleams in piney glens and canons wild, 

On tumbling cataracts and singing rills, 

That are not seen but heard amid the gloom ; 

Making the savage scene, remote and lone, 

Seem holy as the fane where thousands kneel 

And worship 'neath the dome that Art hath reared. 

Is that a rival moon whose tender glow 

Now silvers in the east the speary points 

Of bulky pines that crowd the mountain pass ? 

No, it is Venus, prophet-star of day — 

The lovers' planet, lambent, large, and full ; 

And what a lunar glory trails she now 

Along the dewy chambers of the morn ! 



SUNI^ISE NEAR HENNESS PASS. 85 

But moon and planet pale and dwindle small 

Before the coming of a greater orb ; 

As eyes of love, that brightly beamed in life, 

Contract and darken 'neath the glare that streams 

Upon them from the realms of fadeless light. 

The gray sky whitens with a boreal glow 

Along the farthest dark blue line of hills ; 

Then flushes into amber faint, and then 

To saffron hues that kindle into rose. 

Life stirs with dawning light. The birds awake, 

And welcome it with twitterings of joy, 

Hoarse murmurs from the Yuba's fretted stream 

Come faintly up from depths of gorges dark. 

The cool air, rising over banks of snow, 
With gentle rustling fans the cooing birds ; 
And all the dusky woods are stirred and thrilled 
With swelling of the Memnon strain that flows 
From touchings of no priest but Nature's self. 
Peak after peak beacons the coming day, 
And snowy summits blush like maiden cheeks 
At nearing footsteps of expected swain. 
The splintered pinnacles and rocky crags 
That late frowned gloomily as castles old 



86 CALIFORNIAN PICTURES. 

Perched on the dizzy heights that guard the Rhine, 

Now softly rise in gold and purple air, 

And move the soul like sad and stately verse. 

The east is all aglow with brightening flame. 

That overflows the willow-fringed vale, 

And drives the shadows from ravine and glen. 

In ghastly pallor wanes the rayless moon, 

While jeweled Venus has evanished quite. 

Oh, what a burst of splendor 1 A great globe 
Of burning gold, flashing insufferably, 
And warming all the scene with ardent ray, 
Heaves into view above the mountain's line. 
Darts golden arrows through the dusky aisles 
Of thickly-columned cedar, pine, and fir. 
Transmutes the common dust to shining haze. 
Licks up the rising mists with tongue of flame. 
Gilds the "pale streams with heavenly alchemy," 
And down the shaggy slope, for scores of miles, 
Pours forth a cataract of tremulous light 
That floods the valley at its rolling base. 
Making the arid plain a zone of tropic heat. 



ON THE SUMMIT. 



Arrived at the summit of the Sierra Nevada, on 
the line of the raih"oad, there are many dehghtful 
pedestrian and horseback excursions to be made in 
various directions. At Summit Valley (which is as- 
sociated with the relief of the tragically fated Donner 
emigrants, and is only three miles from Donner Pass) 
there is an odious saw-mill, which has thinned out 
the forests ; an ugly group of whitewashed houses; a 
ruined creek, whose waters are like a tan-vat ; a big 
sandy dam across the valley, reared in a vain attempt 
to make an ice pond ; a multitude of dead, blanched 
trees ; a great, staring, repellant blank ; and yet this 
valley is not unlovely. Its upper end, still a green 
meadow, leads to the base of peaks ten thousand or 



88 CALIFORNIAN PICTURES. 

twelve thousand feet high, whose light gray summits 
of granite, or volcanic breccia, weathered into castel- 
lated forms, rise in sharp contrast to the green woods 
margining the level mead. A little apart from the 
noisy station the woods are beautiful, as we have de- 
scribed them, and the boulder-strewn earth reminds 
one of a pasture dotted with sheep. On the north- 
ern side rises the square butte of Mount Stanford, 
two thousand four hundred and fifty-three feet above 
the valley, and nine thousand two hundred and thirty- 
seven feet above the sea. Its volcanic crest is carved 
into a curious resemblance to a ruined castle, and 
hence it was named, and is still popularly called, 
Castle Peak ; but as the same title is affixed to sev- 
eral peaks along the range, the state geologist has 
wisely given it another on the official maps. This 
peak can be ascended to the base of the summit 
crags on horseback ; the remaining climb afoot, up 
a very steep slope of sliding debris, is arduous but 
short, and is repaid by a superb view, embracing at 
least a hundred miles of the Sierra crests, their nu- 



ON THE SUMMIT. 89 

merous sharp peaks streaked with snow, and lying 
between them at intervals the many lakes of the re- 
gion, including the flashing sheet of Tahoe, nearly 
thirty miles long, the dark and deep-set Donner, and 
the little meadow-fringed lakes of Anderson Valley ; 
while on either side stretch the slopes of the range, 
rugged, with vast exposures of granite, overlaid here 
and there by the lava of ancient craters, and bristling 
lower down with receding coniferous woods, that melt 
into the purple distance as the ridgy flanks of the 
range sink at last into the hazy plains. On one side 
of this characteristic peak the foot-climber stops to 
rest on a depression where grass and flowers grow 
luxuriantly, and swarms of humming-birds hover over 
the floral feast, their brilliant iridescent plumage 
flashing in the sun, and the movement of their wings 
filling the air with a bee-like drone. Above all this 
beauty frown the bare volcanic cliffs and pinnacles 
that top the mountain-Eden and the desert side by 
side. The upper Sierra is full of contrasts and sur- 
prises. After tedious walking over rocky barrens, or 



90 CALIFORNIAN PICTURES. 

toilsome climbing up slippery gorges, in the very 
path of recent torrents, one comes suddenly on little 
bits of garden and wild lawn, where butterfly and 
bird resort, and the air is sweet with perfume. At 
the base of cliffs which looked forbidden at a dis- 
tance, cool springs will be found, painting the ravines 
with freshest green ; red lilies swing their bells, lupins 
and larkspurs call down the tint of heaven ; ferns 
shake their delicate plumes, bright with drops of 
dew; and the rocks offer soft cushions of moss, the 
precipice above, where water trickles down, being 
clad with lichens, and a hundred crannied growths. 
The delighted pedestrian lingers at such oases, loath 
to go forward. Goethe says, " Great heights charm 
us; the steps that lead to them do not." But this is 
hardly true in a great part of the Sierra Nevada, 
where the scenery by the way lightens the labor of 
climbing, and the sensation at the summit is only the 
climax of protracted enjoyment. 

The tourist who stops a few days at Summit Val- 
ley will find a walk along the railroad, through 



ON THE SUMMIT. 



91 



the snow-sheds, peculiarly entertaining. These sheds, 
covering the track for thirty-five miles, are massive 




Section of Snow-shed. 



arched galleries of large timbers, shady and cool, 
blackened with the smoke of engines, sinuous, and 
full of strange sounds. Through the vents in the 



92 CALIFORNTAN PICTURES. 

roof and the interstices between the roof-boards, the 
sunlight falls in countless narrow bars, pallid as moon- 
light. Standing in a curve the effect is precisely that 
of the interior of some old Gothic cloister or abbey 
hall, with the light breaking through narrow side 
windows. The footstep awakes echoes, and the tones 
of the voice are full and resounding. A coming train 
announces itself miles away by the tinkling crepita- 
tion communicated along the rails, which gradually 
swells into a metallic ring, followed by a thunderous 
roar that shakes the ground ; then the shriek of the 
engine-valve, and in a flash the engine itself bursts 
into view, the bars of sunlight playing across its 
dark front with kaleidoscopic effect. There is ample 
space on either side of the track for pedestrians to 
stand as the train rushes past, but it looks as if it 
must crush everything before it, and burst through 
the very shed. The approach of a train at night is 
heralded by a sound like the distant roaring of surf, 
half an hour before the train itself arrives ; and when 
the locomotive dashes into view, the dazzling glare 



ON THE SUMMIT. 93 

of its head-light in the black cavern, shooting like a 
meteor from the Plutonic abyss, is wild and awful. 
The warning whistle, prolonged in strange diminu- 
endo notes, that sound like groans and sighs from 
Inferno, is echoed far and long among the crags and 
forests. 

Summit Valley, lying three miles west of the high- 
est point on the railroad, is six thousand seven hun- 
dred and seventy-four feet above the sea. The air is 
keen and invigorating; there are few summer nights 
without frost, but the days are warm enough for 
health and comfort. Nine miles southward, and six 
hundred and sixty-one feet lower, are the little known 
but remarkable "Summit Soda Springs." The drive 
to these springs is one of the most picturesque and 
enjoyable in the Sierra. Passing by fine dark cliffs 
of volcanic breccia to the right, and over low hills 
covered with tall, red firs, the road leads to Ander- 
son Valley, a green meadow, embosoming three 
little lakes, which are perfectly idyllic in their quiet 
beauty. These lakes are the remnants of a larger 



94 CALIFORNIAN PICTURES. 

single body which evidently once filled the whole 
valle}^ Their outlet is through a narrow rocky gorge 
which empties into a tributary of the north fork of 
the American River. The road follows the steep 
side of this gorge for a short distance, then reaches 
the summit of a ridge overlooking the canon of the 
American, two thousand feet below. Looking down 
this cafion, one sees rising from its blue depths the 
grand bulk of Eagle Cliff, — a rocky promontory 
whose top is probably eight thousand feet above the 
sea, and whose bald slope to the river presents a pre- 
cipitous front of inaccessible steepness. The largely 
exposed mass of this elevation makes a magnificently 
long outline across the sky, and when the caiion is 
hazy in the afternoon, and the sun declines towards 
the west, the sharp sculpture of the cliff is obscured 
behind a purple veil and presents a front of ethereal 
softness, like a vast shadow projected against the 
heavens, or a curtain let down from the infinite. 
Directly across the cafion, looking southward, the 
ridge separating the north American from the middle 



ON THE SUMMIT. 95 

fork of the main river sweeps up in a still longer 
and grander line, which swells into snow-peaks from 
nine thousand to ten thousand feet high, — as high 
above the valley at the bottom of the caiion as 
Mount Washington is above the sea, — exposing four 
thousand feet of uplift to the glance, and weathered 
into a rich variety of pinnacled, domed, and serrated 
forms. The descent into the caiion is a long zigzag 
through a lovely forest, in which the red fir, with its 
deeply corrugated bark, attains a height of from one 
hundred and fifty to two hundred and fifty feet, and 
frequently has a thickness at its base of four or five 
feet. The yellow pine {P. ponderosd), even more mas- 
sive, lifts its rich foliage above a bright and leather- 
colored trunk, the bark on which is almost smooth, 
and is divided into long plates. But the monarch of 
these woods (though infrequent here) is the sugar 
pine {P. Lambertiand), whose smooth trunk, often 
six feet through, rises a hundred feet or more with- 
out a limb, perfectly straight, and is crowned with a 
most characteristic, irregular, and picturesque top, its 



96 • CALIFORNIAN PICTURES. 

slender cones, a foot or more in lenarth, haneino; 
from the tips of the boughs hke ear-drops. The eye 
constantly seeks out these magnificent trees, and 
every large one is hailed with admiring exclamations. 
Dwarf oak and manzanita, ceanothus and chemisal, 
are the prevailing underbrush. In sunny open spaces, 
or on bits of timberless meadow, the rose, and thim- 
ble-berry, and a purple-blooming asclepia abound. 
Occasional large patches of a broad-leafed helian- 
thus, when not in bloom, curiously resemble ill-kept 
tobacco fields. About grassy springs a very fragrant 
white lily sparingly unveils its virgin beauty. A 
spotted red species of the lily is more common, and 
small, low-flowering plants are numerous. The south- 
ern slope of the ridge, descending to the soda springs, 
has a deep soil and is very thickly timbered. At its 
base the small streams are lined with thickets of 
quaking aspen, cottonwood, and balm of Gilead, alter- 
nating with more continuous groves of alder and 
willow, where the prevailing undergrowth is a silk- 
weed, four or five feet high, whose slender stalks, 



ON THE SUMMIT. 97 

bearing narrow, sharply-cut leaves, are thickly crowned 
with purple blossoms. Thickets of thorn afford cover 
for numerous quail. Coniferous trees continue along 
the narrow banks of the river, but stand more apart. 
At the head of the canon, the granite breaks down 
in huge benches, or shelves, presenting perpendicular 
faces as looked at from below. The river tumbles a 
hundred feet, in cascades and falls, through a gorge 
of granite set in a lovely grove of cedar and pine, 
and pools of green water sparkle in clean basins of 
granite at the foot of every fall. The rock of this 
gorge is richly browned and polished, except on the 
gray faces of the cliffs overhanging the stream. Far- 
ther up the canon, where the main crest of the Sierra 
describes the arc of a circle along the eastern sky, 
and is crowned by several high peaks, the granite is 
overlaid with lava and breccia, the product of the 
volcanoes which anciently dominated and overflowed 
this region, and whose relics are seen in the sharp 
cones of trachyte at the summit. Near the junction 
of granite and volcanic rocks, numerous soda springs 

7 



98 CALIFORNIAN PICTURES. 

boil up through seams in the ledges, often in the 
very bed of the stream. The water of these springs 
is highly charged with carbonic acid, is delightfully 
cool and pungent, and contains enough iron to make 
it a orood tonic, while it has other saline constituents 
of much sanitary value. Where the fountains bubble 
up they have formed mounds of ferruginous earth 
and soda crust, and their water stains the river banks 
and currents at intervals. One of the largest and 
finest springs has been utilized, forming one of the 
most picturesque resorts in California. About two 
miles below, the river has cut a narrow channel one 
hundred and fifty feet deep and one eighth of a mile 
long through solid granite. This chasm is but a few 
rods wide at top, and only a few feet wide at bottom, 
where there are numerous smooth pot-holes, forming 
deep pools of wonderfully transparent water of an ex- 
quisite aquamarine tint. There is enough descent to 
make the current empty from one pool to another in 
little cascades, over sharp pitcher-lips of polished rock. 
Lovers of angling are provoked to find no fish in these 



ON THE SUMMIT. 99 

charming basins. A few stunted but picturesque 
cedars are stuck like cockades in the clefts above, 
and the summits of the chasm walls are rounded and 
smoothed by ancient glacial action. To this place 
was given the name of Munger's Gorge, by a gay 
picnic party last summer, in honor of the fine artist 
who sat with them on its brink, and was first to 
paint it. A few miles below is a still deeper and 
grander gorge, at the foot of Eagle Cliff, where the 
precipitous granite walls rise a thousand feet or more, 
and the stream makes a sheer fall of a hundred feet. 
Above this fall fish cannot ascend, and so it hap- 
pens the beautiful upper river is the angler's dis- 
appointment. There are many fine climbs to be 
made in the vicinity of the soda springs, including 
Mount Anderson and Tinker's Knob, companion 
peaks, separated only by a saddle-like depression a 
few hundred feet deep and scarcely a mile long, at 
the very head of the canon, dividing it from the head 
of Tuckee River, on the eastern slope, by a few miles. 
These peaks, having an elevation from three thousand 



lOO CALIFORNIAN PICTURES. 

to three thousand five hundred feet above the river, 
and from nine thousand to nine thousand five hun- 
dred above the sea, can be cHmbed with comparative 
ease in a few hours. Tinker's Knob, the higher of 
the two (named after an old mountaineer, with hu- 
morous reference to his eccentric nasal feature), is a 
sharp cone of trachyte, rising above a curving ridge 
composed partly of the same material and partly of 
lava and breccia overl3ang granite. Its summit, only 
a few yards in extent, is flat, and paved with thin 
slabs of trachyte, and cannot be scaled without the 
aid of the hands in clambering over its steep slopes 
of broken rock. Anderson is shaped like a mound 
cut in half and is composed of breccia (volcanic con- 
glomerate), rising on the exposed face in perpendicu- 
lar cliffs, similar to those which occur lower down 
the slopes. The ridge crowned by these twin peaks 
is approached over a steep mountain of granite boul- 
ders, morainal in character, which leads to a table- 
land clad sparsely with yellow pines and firs. Clam- 
bering over the broken rock to the top of Tinker's 



ON THE SUMMIT. lOl 

Knob a magnificent panorama is unfolded. Over 
three thousand feet below winds the American River, 
— a ribbon of silver in a concavity of sombre green, 
seen at intervals only in starry flashes, like diamonds 
set in emerald. The eye follows the course of the 
cafion fifty or sixty miles down the western slope, 
marking the interlapping and receding ridges which 
melt at last into the hazy distance of the Sacramento 
Valley. With the afternoon sun lighting up this 
slope, shooting its rays through the ranks of pines, 
and making glorious the smoke of burning forests or 
the river vapors, which soften without concealing the 
scene, the effect is wonderfully rich. Looking north 
and south, the eye discerns a long procession of 
peaks, including Mount Stanford, the Downieville 
Buttes, and Mount Lassen. To the east lies Lake 
Tahoe, revealed for nearly its whole length, with en- 
vironments of picturesque peaks. There, too, lies its 
grand outlet, the basin of the Truckee River, which 
can be followed for fifty miles to the Truckee mead- 
ows in Nevada, past several railroad towns. The line 



T02 CALIFOKNIAN PICTURES. 

of snow-sheds from the ridge above Donner Lake to 
Truckee is distinctly seen, and the roar of passing 
trains comes faintly up. The Washoe Mountains 
bound the view in that direction, completing a grand 
picture. The view is amphitheatrical, and the radius 
of it cannot be under two hundred miles. 

A still finer outlook can be obtained from a some- 
what higher peak to the southward, which heads 
the next caiion in that direction, and is approached 
over or along a succession of volcanic spurs, edged 
with sharp cliffs of breccia, of true drift conglomer- 
ate, and narrow plateaus of the same material rest- 
ing on vertical walls of basalt. The cliffs in one 
place are a dark Vandyke brown, faced with brill- 
iant red and yellow lichens, and the talus at their 
base is a grassy slope of vivid green. Opposite 
these, across a gulf perhaps two thousand feet deep, 
rises the bluff face of the peak we seek, — shaped 
like the South Dome of Yosemite, but a mass of 
crumbling breccia of a pale chocolate or drab color, 
enameled with patches of snow. Some hard climb- 



ON THE SUMMIT. 103 

ing IS necessary to surmount this, but the view re- 
pays the labor. Though much of the character 
described above, it is more extensive, giving a finer 
idea of the summit peaks for a distance of one hun- 
dred and fifty miles along the range. Mount Lassen 
and the Black Butte, its neighbors, — volcanic cones 
both, — are beautifully exposed, and towers higher 
than any mountain points in that direction until 
Mount Shasta is reached, only seventy miles farther 
north. Looming into view one after the other, as 
the eager climber ascends, they excite the mind and 
stimulate the weary limbs to renewed effort ; and as 
the view, at first limited by near ridges, expands to 
a vast circle, melting on every side in the atmos- 
phere, the soul expands with it, and the very flesh 
that holds it grows buoyant. 

"What now to me the jars of life, 
Its petty cares, its harder throes ? 
The hills are free from toil and strife, 
And clasp me in their deep repose. 



I04 CALIFORNIAN PICTURES. 

" They soothe the paui within my breast 
No power but theirs could ever reach ; 
They emblem that eternal rest 

We cannot compass in our speech."^ 

A couple of thousand feet below are several little 
blue lakelets, fed by melting snows, in small basins 
of verdure. Flowers bloom in gold and blue and 
purple beauty at their margins, and at the very edge 
of the frozen snow. A fitful breeze sweeps a quick 
ripple of silvery wrinkles over the placid pools, and 
they are smooth and blue again in an instant. 
There is no cloud in the sky, but shadows of high- 
flying birds pass over the landscape below, remind- 
ing us of clouds, and intensifying the sensation of 
vast space and depth. Recovered from the ecstasy 
of this grand scene, we begin to study the geology 
of the region, which is beautifully revealed. First, 
an upheaval of granite, rupturing, displacing, and 
metamorphosing the beds of sedimentary rock depos- 
ited when the ocean lay over the sight of the range. 

1 John R. Ridge. 



ON THE SUMMIT. 105 

Then, over the granite, and crowning all the highest 
ridges and peaks, are layers of volcanic rock — tra- 
chyte, breccia, red lava, pumice, and scoria — cut 
through clear to the underlying granite at the head 
of canons, first by the glaciers that succeeded the 
volcanic period, and later by frost and freshet, by 
slides and avalanches. The evidences of glacial ac- 
tion below the long line of ancient craters, can be 
clearly traced in the excavation of the lava flows; 
in the rounded and polished masses of granite; in 
the erratic boulders left here and there, perched like 
monuments on solid ledges ; in the morainal deposits 
cut through by modern streams or still forming 
lakes. Thus the reign of ice succeeded the reign 
of fire, and both these tremendous forces were 
needed to fashion the rich mountain forms, and to 
prepare the way for all the lovely forests greening 
their flanks. 

Perhaps a little finer exhibition of glacial action 
is that to be seen in the canon of the South Yuba, 
leading out of Bear Valley, twenty-two miles west 



I06 CALIFORNIAN PICTURES. 

of the railroad summit, and a little north from the 
Soda Spring region. Bear Valley is about a thou- 
sand feet below the ridge along which the railroad 
passes. It was anciently filled by a lake caused by 
the terminal moraine of a glacier. The cutting 
through finally drained the lake, and left, first a mo- 
rass, then a meadow. Going up the valley two or 
three miles, to the mouth of a deep gorge, the ob- 
serving traveler will notice many glacier-polished hills 
of granite — bare mounds of rock that were carved 
into shape by a moving body of ice, ages ago. 
The gorge itself has been cut down to a depth of 
from three hundred to eis^ht hundred feet through 
granite ; and its walls, curved and sloped at their 
summits, and sharply cut and polished on their 
faces, frown over the stream that drops from one 
green bowl of rock to another at their clean -swept 
bases. Immense pot-holes, still retaining the boul- 
ders that excavated them, are frequent through the 
bottom of this wild gorge. Some of them have been 
worn through on one side and form little cascades. 



ON THE SUMMIT. 107 

For the purpose of conveying the pure water of the 
Yuba to Nevada City a narrow flume covered with 
planks has been built through this gorge, which 
would else be inaccessible to the tourist. Over this 
pathway one can walk into the rocky chasm for two 
miles. The construction of the flume was a work 
of difficulty and danger. It is supported partly by 
walls laid up en the outer side ; partly by iron bars 
and wire cables fastened in the solid rock, which 
hold it in suspension over perpendicular depths. 
The face of the rock had to be blasted to make 
way for it, and the blasting could be effected in 
places only by letting men down from the top of 
the cliff with ropes, and they drilled and charged 
the powder-holes, hung in mid-air. One poor fel- 
low, who put off a blast prematurely, was blown 
from his airy perch across the river and dashed in 
pieces. Walking securely along this flume, one 
looks down a sheer precipice into the yawning river- 
holes far below, enjoying their transparent green and 
the snowy play of their cascades, and wondering at 



Io8 CALIFORNIAN PICTURES. 

the force which cut those enormous bowls in the 
soHd granite, and which keeps the whole bottom of 
the gorge swept clean and smooth. Looking up, on 
one hand, the neck stiffens and the eye wearies with 
the effort to see the whole of the perpendicular cliff. 
The lofty coniferous trees above, which sometimes 
nod over the beetling edge, are dwarfed by the dis- 
tance. The face of the cliff is moist here and there 
with dripping springs, which cover it with exquisite 
mosses and many rare flowering plants, ferns, and 
vines, the delight of botanists. The less erect wall 
on the opposite side, scarcely a stone's-throw across, 
is brown and gray with motley lichen patches. It 
is a place to linger in for hours, and to leave with 
regret. 

Returning to the summit, let us leave the railroad 
at the point where it begins its descent of the east- 
ern slope, and climb the tree-covered ridge and bald 
granite cliffs overlooking it to the left. A thousand 
feet above the pass will give an elevation about eight 
thousand feet above the sea, commanding a view of 



ON THE SUMMIT. 109 

Donner Lake and the valley of the Truckee, over 
two thousand feet below, and down the eastern slope 
to the transverse mountain lines of Nevada, sixty 
miles off. Right and left the view is obstructed by 
crags and pinnacles of bare granite, which loom up 
cold and gray against the intense blue, except when 
the morning or evening light warms and empurples 
them, or tinges them with rose, as seen afar in the 
last glow of sunset. Among these rocky summits 
lies Lake Angela, gemmed in the granite and gir- 
dled with fir groves and narrow fringes of grass and 
flowers, — a cup of stone, decorated on its sides with 
Nature's own graceful arabesque. Donner Lake is 
sunk in a narrow, oblong canon, cut through the 
granite by one of the ancient glaciers of the eastern 
slope, a tributary, probably, of the enormous ice-river 
which once put out of the basin of Lake Tahoe and 
occupied the present channel of the Truckee. The 
descent to Donner from the granite peaks at its 
western end is abrupt and rugged, and the view from 
those peaks is remarkable for its stern grandeur. It 



I lO 



CALIFORNIA^ PICTURES. 



was near this point that Bierstadt made the studies 
for his most faithful picture of California scenery. At 




Donner Lake, Mount Sanford In the distance. 

the base of the cliffs the lake, an irregular oval three 
miles long, and half a •mile to a mile wide, steel-gray 



ON THE SUMMIT. Ill 

or dark lead in color, when the sun is not flashing 
from its smooth surface, or the silvery vapors are not 
rising, framed by sloping ranks of spear-headed pines ; 
beyond the lake, a dark trough ending in a sky-line 
of lofty mountains, softened by the pearly gray of 
morning, and exposed in all the sharpness of their 
rocky anatomy by the glow of evening, which tints 
them a color the despair of art, — this completes the 
picture of Donner. 

But the gem of all scenes in this part of the 
Sierra is Lake Tahoe, situated about fifteen miles 
southerly from Donner, between the double crests 
of the range, measuring about twenty-three miles 
long from northeast to southwest, by about fifteen 
miles wide at its widest, having an altitude of six 
thousand two hundred and eighteen feet above the 
sea, and being surrounded by mountains that rise 
from one thousand to four thousand feet higher, 
volcanic for the most part, except in the southwest, 
where they are granitic. The favorite road follows 
for fifteen miles the banks of its outlet, Truckee 



1 1 2 CALIFORNIAN PICTURES. 

River, — a rapid stream of remarkably clear water, 
having a width of from sixty to a hundred feet, 
and flowing over a bed of boulders, between groves 
of alder, willow, maple, cottonwood, and aspen. The 
heavily timbered ridges, putting down in nearly 
straight lines from the summit, rise on either side of 
this stream to a height of from one thousand to two 
thousand feet, at a sharp angle, and are composed 
of volcanic rock, originating with the extinct craters 
of the crest, and sometimes exposed in high and 
picturesque cliffs of a rich color. Extensive logging 
operations are conducted along the Truckee, and it 
is one of the sights of the trip to witness the shoot- 
ing of the logs along timber-ways for one thousand 
two hundred feet down the side of the ridge. They 
make the descent in thunder and smoke, and each 
log, as it strikes the water, will send up a beautiful 
column of spray a hundred and fifty feet, resembling 
the effect of a submarine explosion. The banks of 
the river are strewn with granite boulders and cob- 
bles, which could only have been brought from the 



ON THE SUMMIT. 1 13 

head of the lake by a glacier, since the adjoining 
ridges are entirely volcanic clear down to the stream. 
Indeed, glacial marks are plain enough on the rocks 
about the lake, the polish even remaining on one 
exposure of volcanic rock on the eastern shore near 
Tahoe City. Imposing as must have been the Ta- 
hoe or Truckee glacier, it was narrower below the 
present lake-bed than one of three glaciers still liv- 
ing on the flanks of Mount Shasta, — the Agassiz 
Glacier, as named by Clarence King, — which has 
a width of about three miles; whereas the Truckee 
is hardly so wide as the Whitney Glacier, — about 
half a mile. The first sight of the lake is very 
striking as one breaks from the sombre-hued for- 
ests of pine and fir, and gazes on a wide expanse 
of blue and gray water, sparkling in the sun, and 
relieved by a distant background of violet-colored 
mountains. There is an excitino; freshness in the 
air, and the spirits are elate with freedom and joy. 
It is a treat to watch the alternations of color on the 
water. Prof. John Leconte, who recently made some 



114 CALIFORNIAN PICTURES. 

interesting observations on this and other phenomena 
of the lake, says that, wherever the depth exceeds 
two hundred feet, the water assumes a beautiful 
shade of " Marie Louise blue." Where it is shallow, 
and the bottom is white, it assumes an exquisite 
emerald green color, as in the famous Emerald 
Cove. • Near the southern and eastern shores the 
white sandy bottom brings out the green color very 
strikingly. The same authority informs us that his 
soundings indicate that there is a deep subaqueous 
channel traversing the whole lake in its greatest di- 
mensions, or north and south. At several points in 
this channel the depth exceeds one thousand five 
hundred feet. The temperature of the water de- 
creases with increasing depth to about seven hun- 
dred or eight hundred feet, and below this depth it 
remains sensibly the same down to one thousand 
five hundred feet. The constant prevalent temper- 
ature below seven hundred or eight hundred feet is 
about 39° Fahrenheit, — the point at which fresh 
water always attains its maximum density. The 



ON THE SUMMIT. II5 

temperature of the water above the depth named 
was found, during the summer, to be from 41° to 
67°. Owing to the above facts of depth and tem- 
perature, the lake never freezes, except in shallow 
and detached portions. As Professor Leconte says, 
before the conditions preceding freezing can occur, 
the water, for a depth of eight hundred feet, must 
cool down to 39°, for, until it does, the colder sub- 
stratum will not float to the surface. The winter 
is over before this equalization can be effected, and 
so the water does not freeze. Owing also to the 
lower water being at a constant temperature only 
7° above the freezing point, drowned bodies reach- 
ing it are not inflated by the gases resulting from 
decomposition at a higher temperature, and, there- 
fore, do not float. The transparency of the water 
is so great that small white objects sunk in it can 
be seen to a depth of more than one hundred feet. 
Sailing or rowing over the translucent depths, not 
too far from shore, one sees the beautiful trout far 
below, and sometimes their shadows on the light bot- 



I 1 6 CALIFORNIAN PICTURES. 

torn. It is like hovering above a denser atmos- 
phere. But the surface of the lake easily ruffles into 
dangerous waves under a sudden wind, and a num- 
ber of incautious persons have been lost in these 
cold depths which never give up their dead. The 
beaches of white sand, or clean, bright pebbles, rich 
in polished agate, jasper, and carnelian, margined with 
grassy meads where the strawberry ripens its luscious 
fruit, and running close to park-like groves of pine, 
fir, and cedar, afford delightful rambles. The shore- 
lines are informal and picturesque, opening into green 
coves and bays, where sometimes a cascade comes 
foaming down from the snow-peaks, or pushing out 
sharp points of timber and long strips of reedy 
marsh, leading to valleys where smaller lakes are 
found glassed amid a close frame-work of rocky 
heights. One of the prettiest of these side lake- 
lets rejoices in the poetic name of Fallen Leaf 
Lake, from the circumstance that its placid surface 
is often strewn with the leaves of deciduous trees 
blown from the banks. Another is called Cascade 



ON THE SUMMIT. 1 17 

Lake, because a little water-fall tumbles over a ledge 
into its bosom. Both of these small sheets have 
often been painted by the artists who repair to Ta- 
hoe every summer; but their favorite is the large 
lake, with its superb mountain boundaries, which on 
the northwest are lofty, snow-clad, and beautifully 
sculptured. The afternoon haze over mountain and 
lake is a delicate, I^early gray. Later, this color 
shades off into violet, and, as the sun sinks, the 
mountains take on the most delicious crimson flush, 
deepening into purple, while the lake is wonderful 
in its play of reflected color, and at a certain hour 
looks like an opal set in rubies. The moon at night 
converts the surface into a shield of flashing silver. 
By day or night the musical lapse of the wavelets on 
the beach charms and soothes ; and when all the 
solitude of its original loneliness seems to come 
over the scene again, we have the sensation of an 
awful spiritual presence, "felt in the heart and felt 
alono[ the blood." 



EL RIO DE LAS PLUMAS. 



River of feathers — calm and graceful stream ! 

They name thee well. The yellow willows droop 
Toward thy tranquil face like plumes, and seem 

At times to kiss thee, as fond lovers stoop 
To kiss the eyes that mirror back their own. 

And in a line of beauty gently flows 
Thy winding water, to the world unknown, — 

The sordid, plodding world, — but not to those 
For whom the river or the brook hath all 

The wonder of old ocean's stormy flood. 
Whose minds see beauty in the leaves of fall 

As in eve's fleecy cloudlets dyed in blood. 

To such, dear stream, thou hast a charm ; the flash 
Of silver lightning from thy glassy face. 



EL RIO DE LAS PLUMAS. HQ 

Inclosed by foliage like a lake, and dash 

Of thy broad, foaming rapids, have a place 
Alike in admiration's seat, and fix 

Upon the often grieved and grieving mind 
Those recollections of delight that mix 

And brighten others of a darker kind. 
For all the beauty of a lovely scene 

Beams not upon the eye to live no more 
Than while we gaze : ah no ! Its spell serene 

Sinks in the heart for aye, and when we pore 
In after years o'er mem'ry's tinted page. 

That lovely landscape rises to the view, 
Attired in all the charms of early age, 

And seems our primal joyance to renew. 

Again we see the triple peaks that rise 

Like purple isles above the yellow grain. 
As lonely 'gainst the deep and cloudless skies 

As are the pyramids on Eg}^pt's plain. 
Here, in a park-like grove of mighty oaks, 

Whose trunks are crimson with the poison vine, 
The acorn-hiding bird, with rapid strokes. 

Startles the echoes where the deer recline. 



I20 CALIFORNIAN PICTURES. 

Afar we hear the laugh of Indian girls, 
Or murmur of the red man's alder flute : 

Their camp smoke floats away in pallid curls : 
The breeze sinks low, and then the air is mute, 

Save that at eve we hear the cricket's keen 

And quiv'ring music, or the hollow note 
Of water-bubbling frog, and catch between 

The turtle's plaint, low in his feathered throat ; 
Or listen to the hooting of the owl, — 

The ghostly owl, that only stirs at night, 
When darkness wraps the landscape like a cowl 

And superstition shudders with affright. 
But here are peace and love, that brood alway 

In blessed calm above a witching scene ; 
And here the soul, a flower that shuns the day, 

Opes to the night and feels a joy serene. 



HEAD-WATERS OF THE SACRAMENTO. 



The upper Sacramento Valley is a vestibule that 
leads to the high altar of Mount Shasta. At first, a 
broad, level plain, — so broad that the Coast Range 
and Sierra Nevada, on either side, are but dimly seen, 
low in the hazy horizon, — it narrows going north- 
ward, until its mountain walls, drawing nearer and 
nearer together, intermix at last, leaving only a chan- 
nel for the waters of the Sacramento River, lying 
between high and steep ridges parallel with its course 
for seventy miles, and then opening into a series of 
small valleys, at a considerable elevation, encircled 
by loftier mountains, where burst forth the springs 
that feed the river and its branches. Dividing sev- 
eral of these small valleys, at the very head of the 



122 CALIFORNIA N PICTURES. 

Sacramento, rises the noble bulk of Shasta, a land- 
mark to the traveler in the great valley below for a 
hundred miles or more, and visible from high points 
to the southward for quite two hundred miles, — a 
snowy cone projected against the sky, without a rival 
peak. To the pedestrian or horseman, who makes 
his way slowly toward this landmark, it is a guide 
and an inspiration for days. In the early times, when 
the great valley was one wide field of flowers in the 
spring, or a rippling sea of wild oats in the summer, 
the distant aspect of the mountain, through the won- 
derfully clear atmosphere of this climate, and in con- 
trast with so much vernal color, was peculiarly fine. 
Many a pioneer gold-hunter retains still, in whatever 
different and remote scene he may now be, the vivid 
impression of its beauty. And even yet the ap- 
proach to Shasta is full of allurement, at the begin- 
ning of summer, when green and flowery tints prevail, 
and before the smoke of forest fires has spread an 
obscuring haze through the sky. At this season the 
valley itself is enjoyable for its verdure and brilliant 



HEAD-WATERS OF THE SACRAMENTO. 123 

bloom ; for its clean, open groves of large oaks ; for its 
denser timber-lines along the dry channels of winter 
streams ; for its gradual upheaval into the mound-like 
swells that prelude the foot-hills; for the cool, sharp 
vision of Sierra snow-crests to the eastward, and the 
lower and softer wall of purple which marks the 
Coast Range. The Sacramento River winds slowly 
its dark greenish current, at first between low banks 
fringed with brier and grape thickets, overtopped 
with sycamores, alders, willows, and cotton-woods ; 
then between bluffs of clay or gravel, where the 
undergrowth is missing. Over the wide, level sur- 
face, in some directions, there is not a tree to break 
the monotony ; but along the horizon, on warm days, 
are cheating visions of trees and water. It is a re- 
lief to strike the oaken parks again, and to see the 
mountain chains drawing closer. Here at the right 
stands Mount Lassen, dominating this portion of the 
Sierra, though only the centre of a colony of ancient 
volcanoes, whose crater-cones have an elevation rang- 
ing from nine thousand to nearly eleven thousand 



I 24 CALIFORNIAN PICTURES. 

feet. From the summit of the highest peak on Las- 
sen, in the clear season, a view is obtained extending 
from Mount Hamilton, in the Coast Range below 
San Francisco, to Mount Pit, in the Siskiyou region 
at the north, a distance in a direct line of nearly 
three hundred and fifty miles ; while the view east 
and west extends from Pyramid Lake, in Nevada, to 
the coast ranges overlooking the Pacific. 

At the point where Mount Lassen is most plainly 
seen from the valley, the foot-hills of the interblend- 
ing ranges are distant only a few miles, and to this 
point the traveler can now go from Sacramento by 
rail, in the cars of the Oregon division of the Central 
Pacific Railroad — distance one hundred and seventy 
miles. The next seventy-five miles of the journey, 
to the foot of Mount Shasta, is made in one of the 
stages which runs through from Redding, the railway 
terminus, to Roseville, the southern terminus of the 
railroad in Oregon. Leaving Sacramento at 2.20 p. 
M., Redding is reached at midnight of the same day. 
In half an hour the stage ride begins, and lasts until 



HEAD-WATERS OF THE SACRAMENTO. 125 

about four o'clock the next afternoon, when Straw- 
berry Valley is reached, about two hundred and forty- 
five miles from Sacramento — time twenty-five hours. 
By this method of travel, much of the upper Sacra- 
mento Valley, and of the foot-hill region north of 
Redding, is lost to observation, either going or re- 
turning. The night ride on the stage, over a rough 
road, especially in the late summer when the dust is 
thick, is very uncomfortable and wearisome ; yet it 
has a certain strange interest. The large head and 
side lights to the stage, alias " mud-wagon," cast 
weird reflections on the deep cuts in the rocky hill- 
sides, and on the ranks of gray-trunked oaks or dusty 
thickets of underbrush. At the stations, placed at 
intervals of twelve miles, sleepy hostlers come out 
with fresh relays of horses, and their half-unwilling 
talk with the drivers reveals queer glimpses of lonely 
wayside life, with its paucity of incident and topic. 
Here and there distant hill-sides are in a lurid blaze, 
— the effect of some careless camper's fire, which is 
spreading destruction among the noblest coniferous 



126 CALIFORNIAN PICTURES. 

woods. Sometimes the stage will dart rapidly through 
a bit of burning forest, the ground beneath the flam- 
ing tree-trunks strewn with ashes and beds of red 
coals, the air heated and filled with suffocating smoke, 
which has a resinous odor. Three times the stage is 
ferried across the Pit and McCloud rivers — the main 
branches of the upper Sacramento, flowing to it on 
the east, from the northeasterly slopes of Shasta, as 
the Sacramento itself flows from the southwesterly 
flank of the same peak — cold, snow-fed streams, all 
three, which convey to the warm valley nearly all the 
chill of their origin ; clear and rapid, too, the resort 
of myriads of salmon, which seek them from the sea 
in the breeding season, and the constant home of 
several species of trout. The foot-hill country along 
the Sacramento contains a few mining camps, as gold 
is still scantily extracted from the river bars, the 
ravines, and slopes. Granite gives way to slate more 
or less veined with quartz, and the drift revealed in 
the river-bed or bank is largely made up of granite, 
slate, and quartz, mixed at last with boulders and 
cobbles of trachyte and lava. 



HEAD-WATERS OF THE SACRAMENTO. 1 27 

As day dawns, the foot-hills, with their several 
species of oak, — smaller than those in the valley, — 
of ceanothus, syringa, manzanita, and poison-oak, have 
given place to long, high, straight ridges, clothed 
thick with pine, and fir, and spruce. These ridges, 
composed of metamorphic and volcanic rocks, form a 
deep, broad canon, unlike the canons of the Sierra to 
the southward in this, that the river is still clear and 
unobstructed by mining wash, that its banks have 
some level space on either side, and are not divested 
of their beautiful vegetation, including groves of con- 
ifers, which spread down from the ridges, mixed with 
dark-limbed, slender, and graceful oaks. As the min- 
ing operations along the upper Sacramento are very 
small, and confined to the primitive methods of cra- 
dling and sluicing, no hydraulic diggings having been 
found, the stream retains its primitive character, and 
for the greater part of its length its banks are virgin. 
The contrast it presents to eyes accustomed to the 
choked and muddy streams of the deep gravel region 
southward, whose original banks and bars have been 



1 28 CALIFORNIAN PICTURES. 

buried fifty to a hundred feet in mining debris^ and 
whose higher banks have been stripped of timber, is 
delightful. The road follows along the steep side 
of the ridge on the west of the river, sometimes ris- 
ing several hundred feet above the stream, then 
plunging down to its very channel, leaving and re- 
turning to it in picturesque coquettish ness. The 
river itself is an almost constant rapid. Having a 
softer material than the granite-bedded Sierra streams 
to cut through, it has worn its channel low down on 
a nearly uniform grade, and nowhere on its course, 
from the foot of Shasta to the plain, has it any of 
the falls and cascades which characterize the Sierra 
streams. It has a beauty all its own, however. In 
a succession of riffles, whose foam is tinged with blue 
or tea-green, it dances and sparkles and sings over 
its clean bed of boulders, over exposed ledges of bed- 
rock, over bars of gray gravel. At intervals, masses 
of basalt-like rock rise in columnar forms or make a 
terrace of many-sided slabs, at the edge of the trans- 
parent current. For fifty miles the water is fringed 



HEAD-WATERS OF THE SACRAMENTO. 1 29 

with rich masses of very large, round, and scalloped 
leaves, slightly drooping from a centre stalk, big and 
shapely enough for parasols. These growths, a spe- 
cies of saxifrage, along exposures of volcanic rock 
that form ledges in the water or rise in clifTs above, 
characterize this stream to within fifteen miles of its 
source. Ascending its course, the ridges rise higher 
and higher, until those immediately hemming it in, 
scarcely half a mile apart, reach an elevation of two 
thousand feet above its level, their thickly wooded 
flanks plunging down very abruptly, and their straight- 
drawn summits bristling with arrow-headed conifers, 
through which, and through their hazy or smoky 
shades, the sunlight breaks in radiant bars, filling the 
whole canon with a mellow glory. Always the rip- 
pling laugh and song of the rapid river, foaming be- 
tween its green rows of parasols, with their twin rows 
of reflections where the water is still ; always those 
straight, high ridges, with their terebinthine woods 
and floods of broken beams. Watching the river, we 
can often see the dark-backed salmon pushing up 
9 



130 CALIFORNIAN PICTURES. 

against the riffles, resolute to obey the instinct that 
reminds them in ocean depths of the cold, fresh 
stream in the heart of far mountains. The trout feed 
on their spawn, and with that as a bait can be caught 
with hook and line in great numbers. Bailey, of the 
Lower Soda Springs, told the writer that he caught 
in June, July, and August, 1873, three thousand one 
hundred and eighty-two trout, baiting with salmon 
eggs. And these upper Sacramento trout are beau- 
tifully speckled, with bright silver bellies, weighing 
commonly from half a pound to two pounds, and 
often more, and having a rich pink flesh. 

From time immemorial the upper Sacramento and 
its tributaries, the Pit and McCloud, which closely 
resemble it, have been the favorite fishing resorts of 
the Indian tribes once so large and numerous in 
this region. Here they gathered in multitudes to 
spear the salmon and hold protracted festivals, of 
which fish-bakes, primitive gambling games, and danc- 
ing, were the leading diversions. These gatherings, 
though in sadly diminished numbers, still occur in 



HEAD-WATERS OF THE SACRAMENTO. 131 

the height of the summer fishing season, and at in- 
tervals along the Sacramento may be seen the conical 
bark huts laid up by the Indians, occasionally still 
tenanted by picturesque but filthy groups ; while far 
into the stream, over deep pools, project the poles, 
supported on crotches, upon which the red man 
stands and hurls his spear — his nude, shapely form 
suggesting the idea of a bronze image, as, erect and 
still, with eye Intent and arm uplifted, he poises his 
weapon for a throw. It is not strange the poor sav- 
ages resented the intrusion of the whites upon these 
picturesque and productive rivers — an intrusion ac- 
companied by much brutality and violence, compared 
with which the retaliatory acts of the Indians lose 
half their atrocity. It may possibly have been an 
impulse of romantic sympathy, as well as mere reck- 
lessness, which led Joaquin Miller, in his uncurbed, 
wayward youth, to consort a while with the Shastas. 
Following in his footsteps through this region, one 
discovers the source of much of his best poetry. On 
the Sacramento, the Pit, and the McCloud, he made 



132 CALIFORNIAN PICTURES. 

the studies for those wild, fresh landscapes which live 
in his poems. Among these lofty ridges and loftier 
peaks, in the very shadow of Shasta, he found all his 
best imagery, and conceived his ideal brown beauties. 
Here was inspired and fed that deep fondness for 
wilderness life which is the prevailing characteristic 
of his muse. Whatever the irregularities of his ca- 
reer, it made him the first original poet of the west- 
ern wilds. Old settlers through the upper Sacra- 
mento country have many stories to tell of him, and 
some are not more flattering than he would like 
them ; but those who knew him best agree in testi- 
fying that he was a dreamy, imaginative young fel- 
low, who loved to muse idly by river side and on the 
mountain top, and who, amid all the savagery and 
looseness which he shared, had a soul in constant 
sympathy with the beautiful in nature. 

But to return to our journey. Following the up- 
per Sacramento, the view of Shasta which can be 
had from the big valley is quite lost. Intervening 
mountains near the eye shut it ofl". One looks con- 



HEAD-WATERS OF THE SACRAMENTO. 133 

stantly forward in hope tliat these will open and re- 
veal the supreme height. Rising from every plunge 
to the river to some point commanding a larger 
view, we look and look in vain, until within fifteen 
miles of the end of our wearisome staging. Then 
we see, first, — from a slight elevation of the road 
overlooking an ox-bow^ bend of the river, which in- 
closes a level bar overgrown with conifers, — an ab- 
rupt and jagged ridge of bare granite, thrust up 
through the slate and overlying lava of the sur- 
rounding country to an elevation of two thousand 
five hundred feet above the valley. This ridge is a 
spur of the Trinity Mountains, putting in from the 
western side, and terminating in a peak called Castle 
Rock, whose extremely narrow and sharply serrated 
crest, of an ashen-gray color, presents the appear- 
ance of spires, pinnacles, and domes, whose sides 
are nearly perpendicular. The lower slopes of this 
beautiful ridge are covered with heavy forests of fir. 
It reminds one of the Yosemite cliffs, and is prob- 
ably the most beautiful uplift of granite outside of 



134 CALIFOKNIAN PICTURES. 

that wonderful valley. When the atmosphere is clear 
and the sun is in the eastern heaven, the bare rock 
is exposed in all its hard anatomy and native cold- 
ness of tint. But when the sun declines toward the 
west, the gray granite crags become violet, deepening 
with evening into purple, while a soft lithographic 
shading subdues their ruggedness and hides the de- 
tail of their sculpture. As the sun goes down be- 
hind them, the brilliant purple and crimson haze 
which enwraps the peak and fills forest and valley 
with glory, makes the scene Indescribably fine. A 
daring engineer of the Oregon Railway climbed the 
tallest of the splintered rocks comprising this peak, 
at some personal risk. Hunters have pursued the 
deer to the base of the highest crag, and on one 
occasion a hard-pressed buck sprung over a precipice 
and was dashed to death below. The Indian women 
used to climb nearly to the top to gather the man- 
zanita berries which grow on the sloping debris, until 
one was caught in a slide and killed by the rocks 
striking her head from above, with which accident 



HEAD-WATERS OE THE SACRAMENTO. 1 35 

they are said to connect a superstitious dread. Like 
the Aryans in their native seats, and their cultured 
Greek descendants, these simple aborigines people 
high mountains with supernatural beings, who are 
thought to be jealous of the sanctity of their re- 
treats. On the farther side of Castle Rock is a lit- 
tle lake, above whose deep and still waters rise the 
granite cliffs with fine effect. 

Continuing up the Sacramento, whose channel has 
now reached an elevation of about two thousand 
three hundred feet, we reach a group of chalybeate 
springs, containing chloride of soda in the largest 
proportion, and heavily charged with carbonic acid. 
The finest of these springs, eight miles from Straw- 
berry Valley, known as Fry's Soda Springs, had 
formed a large mound of soda, silica, and iron be- 
fore it was welled and covered for the use of vis- 
itors resorting to it regularly. Close by flows the 
swift, clear current of the Sacramento. A swarded 
peach-orchard, with its bright grass, the light foliage 
of its trees and their burdens of blossom or fruit, 



I 36 CALIFORNIAN PICTURES. 

contrasts prettily with the sombre color and monot- 
onous forms of the coniferous woods adjoining. Im- 
mediately behind the orchard rises a very straight 
and steep mountain ridge, quite two thousand feet 
above the valley, — an immense wall of forest, so 
precipitous that the growth of tall timber on its 
flank is a wonder. This ridge is a grand object in 
the afternoon, when the declining sun shoots his 
rays in long lines through its woods, turning smoke 
or haze into a veil of softened glory. It is while 
descending an incline toward the Soda Springs that 
the first glimpse of Shasta is caught, looming far 
above such a line of timbered ridges as that de- 
scribed, a cone bare of vegetation, of a pinky ash 
color where the snow has melted, ethereally soft in 
the hazy or smoky perspective of summer, but ear- 
lier in the season sharply relieved against a clear 
sky, with all its sculpture revealed, and its crown 
entirely white with snow. The sight of this great 
peak, so long sought, at so much labor, begets a 
sudden oblivion to dust and fatigue. The spirits 



HEAD-WATERS OF THE SACRAMENTO. 137 

are elated with a new sensation, and it is with a 
sigh of regret that we see the stage plunge into a 
dense wood, which shuts off the wonderful vision as 
suddenly as it appeared. For eight miles beyond 
the Soda Springs the road makes up a tedious as- 
cent — part of the old lava flow of Shasta, rough 
and dusty ; yet it should not be tedious to the lover 
of nature to ride through such magnificent groves 
of pine and fir as clothe it, wherein the sugar pine 
reappears after a long absence, its massive trunk fre- 
quently six feet through, and its picturesque spread 
of boughs, with their long cones at the ends, rising 
to a height of two hundred and fifty feet. In this 
last eio:ht miles an ascent of about one thousand 
two hundred feet is made, and we reach at last Straw- 
berry Valley and the welcome house of Sisson, weary 
enough, but not too weary to stare delightedly at 
Shasta, now in full and plain view before us. 

Strawberry Valley, or Flat, as it is called by some, 
is the first opening into a series of small, elevated 
valleys which stretch about the base of the peak, ex- 



138 CALIFORNIAN PICTURES. 

tending on its western side through Siskiyou County,. 
and including Shasta, Cottonwood, and Scott valleys 
to the north. Strawberry embraces an area of only 
a few miles, broken by encroaching belts of conifers 
which divide it into several parts, and bounded on 
the west by the lofty Scott Mountain, — a range 
whose crest rises at least five thousand feet above 
the valley, and is spotted with snow through the 
whole year. The northern limit of the valley is 
Black Butte, the highest of a large number of infe- 
rior volcanic cones dotting the plateau northwest of 
Shasta. From the beautiful regularity of its outline, 
this sugar-loaf mass of trachytic rock was named 
Cone Mountain by the Geological Survey ; but the 
local and popular name is that gixen above, and 
was suggested by the dark color of the peak, which 
is exaggerated by contrast with the bright verdure of 
Strawberry Valley, and with the pallid tints of the 
grand mountain adjoining. Black Butte has an ele- 
vation of more than three thousand feet above the 
plain at its base, which makes it over six thousand 



HEAD-WATERS OE THE SACRAMENTO. 139 

five hundred feet above the sea. Away from the be- 
littHng bulk of Shasta, it would be a very imposing 
peak, and even where it is, by reason of its sharp 
and sudden uplift, and its isolated position, it is a 
prominent and picturesque object. Strawberry Val- 
ley derives its name from the abundant growth of 
wild strawberries over its surface. This delicious 
fruit can be picked, though in small quantities then, 
as late as September. A large circular area, formerly 
a marsh, fronting Sisson's house, and extending to 
the timbered base of Shasta, has been drained by the 
settlers — chiefly by Sisson himself — and cultivated 
to timothy. By means of irrigating ditches, this 
meadow is kept beautifully green through the whole 
summer and autumn, when other valleys are brown 
and parched. The small creeks and brooks which 
flow together here from Shasta and Scott mountains, 
forming the main Sacramento, meander through the 
timbered or open spaces of the valley, until they 
reach a common outlet into the caiion at Soda 
Springs. Looking from the porch of Sisson's house, 



I40 CALIFORNIAN PICTURES. 

with its pleasant frontage of grass-plat and flower- 
beds, across the timothy meadow, one sees the noble 
bulk of Shasta, only twelve miles off in a direct line, 
rising grandly above the belts of pine and fir that 
encircle its base. As the valley is only three thou- 
sand five hundred and sixty-seven feet above the sea, 
and the highest peak of Shasta is fourteen thousand 
four hundred and forty-three feet, it follows that the 
eye takes in at one glance an uplift of ten thousand 
eight hundred and seventy-eight feet. Seen from this 
place, it is a double-pointed peak, with a considerable 
space between the two summits, the long, sweeping 
line of its sides havin^ an anoxic above the timber of 
twenty-seven to thirty-six degrees, and thence sloping 
down in more gradual curves, which finally melt into 
the valley. 

Isolated by the valleys around its base from the 
ridges of the Sierra Nevada and the Coast Range, 
which in this region are conterminous, if not quite 
intermixed, and showing so much of its real elevation, 
Mount Shasta has the finest exposure of all the lofty 



HEAD-WATERS OF THE SACRAMENTO. 141 

summits in California. Indeed, there are few mount- 
ains anywhere in the world which stand so apart, 
and are seen to such great advantage. Mount Whit- 
ney, in southern California, — its superior in height 
by five hundred or six hundred feet, and its only 
proved superior in the United States, outside of 
Alaska, — is but one of a number of companion 
peaks, of little inferior height, rising a few thousand 
feet above the general elevation of a long crest-line, 
accessible by a quite gradual approach on horseback. 
The peaks about the railroad summit, having an ele- 
vation of from nine thousand to ten thousand feet, are 
reached by an ascent, on the railroad or wagon-road 
grades (which go within three thousand or four thou- 
sand feet of their tops), not less than one hundred 
miles long. But arrived at the base of Shasta, you 
are only three thousand five hundred and sixty-seven 
feet above the sea, and make the remaining elevation 
of nearly eleven thousand feet to the top, on horse- 
back and afoot, in the short distance of fourteen or 
fifteen miles. Standing out so boldly, Shasta is a 



142 CALTFORNIAN PICTURES. 

conspicuous landmark over an area several hundred 
miles in extent, and the view of it from any of the 
valleys at its foot is alone ample reward for the long 
journey necessary to obtain it. The study of it from 
Strawberry Valley is a constant source of pleasure, 
for many days in succession, from the early morning, 
when it is cold and austere, until the evenins^, when 
it is warm and ruddy with a delicious Alpine glow, 
lasting forty minutes after the valley is in cool shadow. 
In the clearest atmosphere, and close as it is, the twin 
cones of its summit look soft and smooth, as if clad 
with soil, where they are not covered or streaked with 
snow. Innocent and inviting as are those slopes, ex- 
cept for the steep angle of their inclination, we know 
they are rough piles of broken rocks, of toppling 
slabs, and sharp volcanic clinkers. But how lovely 
they look ! How delicious in their prevalent tint of 
pinkish drab, streaked with the red of lava edges 
and the white of frozen snow, and relieved so high 
up against the blue sky ; while low down is the 
abruptly terminating line of dark green firs and pines, 



HEAD-WATERS OF THE SACRAMENTO. 1 43 

sloping to the bright grassy meadow, at the foot of 
of all. In some lights, and especially when the at- 
mosphere is hazy, the peak above the timber-line is a 
delicate maiivc color ; and it is then as airy and won- 
derful as the dome of Aladdin's genii-built palace, 
insubstantial almost as the fabric of a vision. 

This description applies only to the summer aspect 
of Shasta, for from November or December until 
June or July, the perfectly clear atmosphere shows 
a distinct and massive cone of snow, glittering in 
the sun or veiled only in clouds. The amount and 
duration of the snow depend upon the character of 
the winter. If that is mild, the snow will not fall 
so deep nor last so long on the lower slopes as in 
ordinary seasons. But there is always more snow 
on the higher portions of the mountain than appears 
from the foot, especially from the valley on the 
southwestern side, where the influence of the sun 
is greatest. Depressions invisible from below will 
be found, on reaching them, to be wide-stretching 
fields of frozen snow and ice ; and the northern 



144 CALIFORNIAN PICTURES. 

slopes, equally with the loftiest points on top, cannot 
be reached from Strawberry Valley at the latest date 
in summer, after the mildest winter, without crossing 
such fields. 

The winter climate of the valley is mild and equa- 
ble. The snow-fall is neither deep nor lasting, and 
the thermometer seldom drops below the freezing 
point. There is not much increase in the volume 
of the streams, and the temperature of their water is 
hardly changed from that of summer, since at all 
seasons it flows directly from icy sources. While 
the winter is so bland below, on that lofty peak 
above it is arctic in severity, and terrific storms can 
be seen raging there when the valley may be com- 
paratively exempt. Thunder and lightning are rare 
phenomena, usually, in California ; but the great vol- 
canic mass of Shasta acts like a magnet, and the 
electric storms about it are sometimes awful. The 
subtile fluid fuses and drills the rocky peaks at the 
summit, leaving large holes in the outcrop which are 
glazed with a green vitreous mineral, not unlike ob- 



HEAD-WATERS OF THE SACRAMENTO. 145 

sidian ; convex blisters of the same substance adher- 
ing to the surface of the rock, and shivering to 
atoms when one tries to remove them. The destruc- 
tion of trees by some of these electrical bursts is 
very great. Yellow or sugar pines, four or five feet 
through and two hundred feet high, will be literally 
torn to pieces and scattered over a wide area. One 
yellow pine of nearly this size, as the writer can 
testify, growing in a meadow near Sisson's, was torn 
as if by an explosion of giant powder, much of it 
having been thrown high up, black streaks being left 
along the lines of cleavage in the trunk, and the 
innumerable fragments of trunk and branches scat- 
tered over an area of about seven acres, disposed on 
the ground in rays, like the spokes of a wheel. 
Trees shivered by lightning, and tall splintered trunks, 
are frequently seen in the forests of the valley and 
on the lower flanks of the mountain. Even in the 
summer, severe wind-storms, accompanied by thunder 
and lightning, sometimes occur, and parties making 
the ascent in clear weather have been overtaken near 



146 CALIFORNIAN PICTURES. 

the summit by sudden squalls, which drove them 
back and caused them much suffering. 

The best time to make the ascent of Shasta is in 
July. In this month the atmosphere is still perfectly 
clear, and the snow is sufficiently melted to afford 
good camping ground at the point where the foot- 
climb beoins. Later in the summer, the view from 
the top is apt to be obscured by haze or smoke ; 
indeed, as late as September or October, before 
there have been any rains, the smoke from forest- 
fires (which were raging last year, at intervals from 
Redding to Yreka, a distance of one hundred and 
ten miles) will be apt to hide the lower country 
completely, inflicting a severe disappointment on the 
tourist. A few persons go up every summer of late 
years, including an occasional woman. Most of the 
parties making the ascent have the guidance of J. 
H. Sisson, whose knowledge of the country, and of 
its wild inhabitants, which he imparts in a pleasant 
manner, contributes much to the interest of the trip. 
He has lived about Shasta for sixteen years, is a 



HEAD-WATERS OF THE SACRAMENTO. 147 

hunter of skill and experience, and what is more 
rare, an earnest lover of the beautiful in nature. 
Under the average height of men, and weighing 
onl}^ one hundred and thirty pounds, he is lithe and 
strong, has great powers of endurance, and much 
courage. Educated in New York State to go through 
Hamilton College, a wild instinct took him west be- 
fore he could enter that institution, and he found the 
career he loved best at the foot of Shasta, where he 
has made a pleasant home for his family, and is 
planning sagacious schen^es of improvement, in an- 
ticipation of the day when the railroad shall bring 
hundreds of tourists every summer to the spot that 
he believes to be the loveliest in America. And, 
indeed, when the railroad shall have made the Shasta 
region easily accessible, it will be the finest resort, 
next to Yosemite, in the Pacific States, for mere 
scenical enjoyment, and for hunting and fishing far 
superior to the Yosemite, if not to any other por- 
tion of California. Deer are very plentiful in the 
mountains, and even in the valley thickets and woods. 



148 CALIFORNIAN PICTURES. 

Before the failure of his sight, Sisson killed from 
sixty to eighty a season, with his single rifle. The 
brown and grizzly bear, quail, and grouse are also 
plentiful. All the rivers are stocked with splendid 
trout; the McCloud River — easily reached from this 
point by wagon-road — containing a rare species, 
called the Dolly Varden, from its large, red spots, 
known to the Indians as the Wye-dul-dickei, and 
found in no other stream in California, and nowhere 
out of the State, except possibly in Oregon. This 
is believed to be the same fish described in some of 
the railroad reports as Salmo specfabulis. Besides 
the true brook or river trout, the Sacramento and 
McCloud contain the large salmon trout, and in the 
season — at its height in July — are filled with 
salmon. Castle Lake is one of the best fly-fishing 
places in the State. As this whole northern region 
is wild and little explored, there being few settlers 
apart from the stage-stations along the one road 
running between Redding and Yreka, game has not 
been thinned out or scared away, and there is an 



HE AD- WATERS OF THE SACRAMENTO. 149 

opportunity for some original exploration. The few 
Indians remaining are mostly domesticated, and none 
are troublesome. It is more nearly a virgin country 
than any in California, except the extreme south- 
eastern Sierra, which is accessible only by a tedious 
journey of many days, off the line of railway com- 
munication. 



THE BIRTH OF BEAUTY. 



An old volcano, sealed in ice and snow, 

Looks from its airy height supreme 
On lesser peaks that dwindle small below ; 

On valleys hazy in the beam 
Of summer suns ; on distant lakes that flash 

Their starry rays in greenwood dense ; 
On canons where blue rapids leap and dash, 

And mosses cling to cliffs immense. 

Here on this height sublime combustion dire 

Once blazed and thundered, pouring down 
Resistless cataracts of rocky fire, 

That from the cloven mountain's crown, 
Around its flanks in every gaping rift, 

O'er meads that girdled green its base, 
Spread out a deep, entombing drift, 

A tongue of ruin to efface. 



THE BIRTH OF BEAUTY. 151 

In throes of terror Nature brings about 

What gives to man the most delight ; 
No scene of peaceful beauty comes without 

Such birth, as day succeeds to night. 
A mountain gem of pearly ray serene, 

Our old volcano shows afar ; 
Fills all the panting soul with pleasure keen. 

And draws it heavenward like a star. 



ASCENT OF MOUNT SHASTA. 



Mounting horses accustomed to the trail, and tak- 
ing along an extra animal, packed with blankets and 
provisions, our little party — consisting of the writer 
and his wife, Sisson the guide, and one of his em- 
ployes — leave Sisson's house in Strawberry Valley, 
at nine o'clock in the morning, bound for the top 
of Mount Shasta. It is a warm September day, and 
the lower atmosphere is hazy and pungently odorous 
with the smoke of burnino: forests. We follow the 
stage-road a short distance northward, the Black Butte 
facing us, and then turn into the woods to the right, 
making directly for the peak. For two or three 
miles the trail, which we have to pursue in single 
file through tall thickets, leads across level ground, 



ASCENT OF MOUNT SHASTA. I 53 

shaded by a noble forest of pine, fir, cedar, and 
spruce, differing little from the same growths at 
about the same elevation in all parts of the Sierra 
Nevada, except that the trees are more openly dis- 
posed, in park-like groves, and have little of the 
bright yellow moss on their trunks which is char- 
acteristic of the Sierra forests within the line of deep 
winter snow. The sugar pine remains the grandest 
tree, but the firs and yellow pines are also very 
straight, tall, and handsome. The underbrush con- 
sists of the wild rose (growing here four to eight 
feet high), the ceanothus, the chestnut-like chincapin, 
a bright-leaved, fragrant laurel (locally known as the 
spice-bush), and more rarely the manzanita. There 
are also large patches of huckleberries. These thick- 
ets are often so dense that it would be hard work 
to follow the slight trail through them on foot ; and, 
even on horseback, one must watch against entan- 
gling his stirrups. Hundreds of species of herbaceous 
plants occur, and nearly all the shrubs and plants 
are bloomers. When the rose thickets are in bios- 



154 CALIFORNIAN PICTURES. 

som, the air is delicious with their fragrance, and the 
honey-bee — which has become wild in these woods, 
as elsewhere in the Sierra — finds great stores of 
food. Late in the summer the balm of Gilead, which 
grows along the streams, distills from its leaves a 
sugary secretion, called honey-dew, on which the 
bees also feed. One swarm of bees in the valley, 
which was hived about the first of June, made from 
that time until September fifteenth, — say in three 
months and a half, — no less than one hundred 
pounds of fine honey. It is pleasant to note the 
absence of the poison-oak, which nowhere in Cali- 
fornia flourishes within the snow-belt, giving out all 
along the Sierra at an elevation of between three 
thousand and four thousand feet. A little to the 
left of the trail, as we cross the valley toward the 
peak, at the foot of a ridge about one thousand five 
hundred feet high, which is one of the lower spurs 
of Shasta, leaps suddenly out of the earth a foam- 
ing torrent, clear and icy cold, whose two streams 
at once unite and form a good-sized creek. This 



ASCENT OF MOUNT SHASTA. 1 55 

is the source of the main Sacramento. To see the 
two mouths of its exit, it is necessary to push aside 
a tangled undergrowth, and to bend low. Between 
these vents is a large chalybeate spring, which seems 
to have a different origin, and stains the earth be- 
tween the parted, snowy waters a rusty red. There 
is a remarkable richness in the flora of this locality, 
embracing, among the bushes and small trees, spe- 
cies of the willow, alder, cornus (resembling the 
eastern dog-wood), birch, hazel, elder, black oak, yew, 
maple {Acer circinatum, probably), wild rose, chinca- 
pin, choke-cherry, black raspberry, gooseberry ; and, 
among the smaller growths, the snow-ball, strawberry, 
pennyroyal, besides several vines and small herba- 
ceous plants, ferns, mosses, and water plants. The 
springs that feed all this vegetation are undoubtedly 
the outpouring of a subterranean stream, originating 
in the melting snow and ice of Shasta, and drained 
through fissures and caverns of volcanic rock. One 
of the characteristics of this mountain is the disap- 
pearance of most of the torrents that have birth near 



156 CALIFORNIAN PICTURES. 

its summit, through the broken rock and porous 
debris of its slopes above the timber Hue ; and as it 
is well known that there are cavernous passages in 
the lava covering all the lower flanks and base of the 
mountain, nothing is more probable than that the 
lost streams of the peak reappear in the enormous 
springs of the valley. Wild animals of all kinds, 
including the bear and deer, at different seasons come 
to these springs to drink, and are especially fond of 
the salty water of the chalybeate spring. Riding 
through the forest on the lower flank of the mount- 
ain, which begins to rise from near this point, we 
met several deer, both going and returning, and 
higher up twice crossed fresh bear-tracks, and saw 
the recent wallow of his plantigrade lordship. There 
is a peculiar charm in following the trail of the va- 
rious wild creatures of the Sierra woods, or catching 
glimpses of them in their privacy. Nothing is more 
fresh and graceful than the bounding movement of 
the deer, especially. At this season the does and 
fawns are seen alone, the antlered bucks having re- 



ASCENT OF MOUNT SHASTA. 1 57 

tired to more elevated places. The social twitter or 
anxious call of quails, hid in the thicket or trooping 
across a rocky open, is almost the only sound that 
mixes with the soughing of the trees, save the occa- 
sional heavy whirr of startled grouse, as they make 
a short flight for a place of concealment. 

As we rise above the valley, at first by a gentle 
ascent, the character of the forest changes. The 
pines are less frequent, the firs are more so, and the 
undergrowth is less thick and varied. The ten or 
twelve species of conifers are reduced at last to three 
or four, — yellow pine, Douglas spruce, and a large 
fir. The surface becomes rough with broken masses 
of basalt and other lava rocks, part of the outflow of 
the slumbering volcanoes above. An unusually rug- 
ged field of this material, where vegetation is nearly 
exhausted, and where the horses bruise their pasterns 
at every step, is called by Sisson " The Devil's Gar- 
den." At an elevation of about seven thousand feet 
the pines give out entirely, and we go through a belt 
of silver-leaf firs [Picea nobilis), a very symmetrical. 



158 CALIFORNIAN PICTURES. 

beautiful tree, with a juicy, greenish-tinted bark, foli- 
age of a faint tea-green color at the tips, ahiiost sil- 
very in certain lights ; the trunk small in diameter, 
but straight and taper as a mast, and reaching a 
height of one hundred and fifty feet. These hand- 
some firs scent the air, while they shut out the rays 
of the sun and give the sky a darker color as seen 
through their dense capitals. The beauty of the trees 
on the lower flanks of Shasta has become known in 
Europe, where their seeds are in demand. Sisson 
has orders for forty to sixty pounds of coniferous 
seeds 3^early, from Germany alone. As the small 
cones of the silver-fir grow at the very top of the 
tree, he has to climb one hundred and fifty feet to 
get the choicest. From the lower boughs of many 
of these trees hang long streamers of black moss, 
curiously like coarse human hair, and calling up fan- 
cies of Absalom caught by his tresses. On the up- 
per edge of this belt of silver-firs we come upon the 
path of the avalanche. Vast snow-slides have mowed 
wide and long swaths through the timber, strewing 



ASCENT OF MOUNT SHASTA. 1 59 

the earth with broken trunks and branches, which 
are partly buried in ash-Hke debris. The boundary 
of these slides is often marked by a bright, little 
grove of young firs, more delicate in color than the 
adjoining forest. In this region of avalanches, also, 
the Pimis flexilis — last tree to maintain life in the 
upper Sierra — begins to appear as a shrub, becomes 
a small tree as the firs give out, and expires as a 
shrub again at the last limit of vegetation, save moss 
or lichen. The forest growths cease quite abruptly 
on Shasta at a height of about eight thousand feet, 
though the Pinus fiexilis maintains a scattered and 
precarious life for a thousand feet higher. This pine, 
with its light-gray bark wrapping the twisted and 
gnarled trunk as tightly as a skin, with its contorted 
and depressed limbs bearing brush-like bunches of 
bright green needles, is a very characteristic produc- 
tion of great elevations in California. It roots itself 
in the very rock, and has the aspect of strenuous 
struggle with unfriendly elements. Its flattened top 
is often so compacted by the deep snows that a man 



1 60 CALIFORNIAN PICTURES. 

can stand upon it, and when the bushes grow thickly- 
together, he can ahiiost walk from one to another. 
Where patches of it have died at last in sheer de- 
spair, it still stands in obstinate strength, white and 
weird, a stubborn ghost of a dwarf tree. 

On a bold bluff overlooking a deep gorge on 
either side, and composed of red lava, broken and 
weathered, but still lying in the place of its flow, we 
reach at last a camping place, above the line of veg- 
etation, as of perpetual snow, and between nine thou- 
sand and ten thousand feet above the sea. It is 
nearly four o'clock, and we have been almost seven 
hours making twelve miles of distance, and something 
over six thousand feet of elevation. Our horses are 
tired and lame, and we are glad enough to give them 
rest. In one of the gorges, a few hundred feet be- 
low our camp, there is a feeble growth of bunch 
grass, at the edge of a field of frozen snow, which 
they are led to pasture upon, after short rations of 
barley and a drink of snow-water. It was curious 
to see one or two of the animals tasting the snow, 



ASCENT OF MOUNT SHASTA. l6l 

as tliey were driven across it to the drinking-pool 
formed by its melting during that day. Gathering 
branches of the dead Pimis flexilis, we made a fire 
against a mass of lava, spread our blankets within 
circular walls of lava rocks, piled up by previous 
climbers as a shelter against the cold winds, and 
prepared for supper. Within a cranny of one of 
these open bed-chambers we found vessels of tin and 
iron, for boiling and frying, stored there by the prov- 
ident Sisson, who soon got ready a grateful meal. 
After tethering the horses near by, w^e were ready 
for night, intending to eat breakfast, and start on our 
foot-climb up the peak by day-break. 

The scene about us was wild and desolate in the 
extreme. Our camping ground, as before stated, was 
a bluff bench of red lava and clinker, above the gen- 
eral surface of which were heaped at intervals huge 
detached masses of the same material, that had fallen 
down from above or become detached' in place. The 
outer edge of this bench commanded a view of the 
whole southwestern slope of the mountain down to 



1 62 CALIFORNIAN PICTURES. 

Strawberry and Shasta valleys, over six thousand feet 
below ; across the valleys to Scott Mountain, over- 
looking the Black Butte, which, from this height, was 
diminished to a small mound ; and thence southerly 
to the canon of the main Sacramento, bounded by 
long and hazy ridges, and filled with smoke from for- 
est fires, which obscured an otherwise magnificent 
view. The flank of Shasta itself was marked by 
trough-like grooves, evidently cut by the melting and 
sliding snow ; the timber growing to the edges of 
these grooves and then giving suddenly out, except 
where it came in as an unbroken, solid belt lower 
down. A large meadow-like plain, four thousand feet 
below, we knew to be a thicket of tangled and thorny 
bushes, threaded only by deer. As the sun sank 
toward the crest of Scott Mountain, through dense 
strata of smoke, it became a blood-red globe, quite 
shorn of its beams, and more or less elongated, and 
could be looked at steadily. It was very strange to 
see this red ball dropping through one band of smoke 
after another, for the strata were of unequal density 



ASCENT OF MOUNT SHASTA. 163 

and width, and the sun seemed to be sinking behind 
bars that made it visible only occasionally and partly. 
Looking backward to Shasta, its highest peak was in 
clear sky, and rosy bright, — a massive cone of lava- 
blocks and snow. To the right and left were deep 
gorges putting down from the peak, their basins filled 
with snow and ice, their slopes partly covered with 
long, narrow bands of snow which led up to the top 
at a very steep angle. Numerous torrents pouring 
down the upper slopes gave forth a subdued roar, 
varied by the dull rumble of the rocky masses they 
detached, and which seemed, by the sound, to be 
constantly moving, although we could not see them. 
The red lava bed on which we stood extended for a 
mile or more, at a slight inclination, to the very base 
of the peaks, which it surrounded like a garment 
that had been pushed down, leaving the two cones 
of the summit standing clear above, of another color, 
their outlines drawn sharply against the sky, — pre- 
eminent, lonely heights, their tops as far above our 
exalted station as Mount Diablo or St. Helena above 



164 CALIFORNIAN PICTURES. 

the sea, — literally, Pelion on Ossa. For we can now 
see plainly the true shape of this volcanic mountain. 
Its apex is divided into two craters. The one at 
the left hand, the lower of the two, is shaped like a 
sugar-loaf, with the top cut off; yet above the circu- 
lar rim of this flat top rises a small pyramid, giving 
the whole mass a very peculiar appearance. The 
right hand and higher peak is less regular and for- 
mal in shape. Its northerly slope comes down to 
join the left hand cone in a sharp, clean line, the 
depression between being filled with a broad field of 
snow ; but the southerly slope has a much reduced 
inclination, running to the timber line far below, and 
its knife -blade edge, composed of volcanic conglom- 
erate, is broken into the most fantastic shapes, sug- 
gesting castellated structures at times, but oftener the 
forms of gnomes and demons. The Indians imagine 
these weird shapes to be, indeed, a kind of mountain 
sprites, which they call appetunes, and which appear 
in watchful and observant attitudes, as if on guard 
against mortal intrusion. The face of this peak, be- 



ASCENT OF MOUNT SHASTA. 165 

tvveen the outlines, is a steep bluff, depressed below 
the wall-like upper edge of bright red breccia, and 
scarcely half covered at this season with long bands 
of snow. The summit has several sharp points, 
which rise above the basin of an ice-filled crater, in- 
visible from below, as is the basin of the left hand 
crater. The lower peak — called distinctively " Cra- 
ter Peak " — is a uniform chocolate-drab in color, 
viewed closely ; while the higher point — called " The 
Main Peak" — diversifies this color with its bluff and 
raesfed edsres of red breccia, with a band of black 
rock and beds of ashy debris. Late in the summer 
the snow is quite gone from the surface of Crater 
Peak upon the steep southern side, remaining always 
at the top, however, and in the depression between 
it and the other peak. The southern face of the 
Main Peak is never free from snow. As measured 
by the State Geological Survey, the outline of Crater 
Peak has an inclination of 36°; that of the Main 
Peak has an inclination of 27° to 28° on the shorter, 
and of 30° to 31° on the longer side. As we con- 



1 66 CALIFORNIA N PICTURES. 

template these outlines from below, the task of climb- 
ing either of them seems formidable enough, and it 
is certain that portions of the slope to be passed over 
are steeper than the measured outline. According 
to Professor Whitney's " Report," published in 1865, 
the Crater Peak had then never been ascended, and 
was " believed by many to be quite inaccessible." 
Its sides, he adds, " appear to be covered with loose 
volcanic materials, probably ashes, lying at the high- 
est angle possible without sliding down." The steep- 
ness of this cone was not exaggerated, but it has 
since been frequently climbed, and has latterly been 
included on the route to the Main Peak by a few of 
the strongest and most resolute climbers. In 1871, 
Clarence King's part}^ which spent six weeks on and 
about the mountain, scaled up this side cone with 
instruments, including the photographic apparatus of 
Watkins. If the slopes were really formed of ashes, 
or other fine material, they could, indeed, hardly be 
climbed, as they would offer no secure footing at 
such a steep angle ; but they are covered with angu- 



ASCENT OF MOUNT SHASTA. 1 67 

lar blocks of trachyte, sometimes very large, formed 
by the breaking down of the crater walls above, and 
affording a footing in the steepest places. From 
our camp, these rough slopes looked smooth enough 
to be ash-beds, and the distance to the top, though 
several miles, and involving an ascent between three 
thousand and four thousand feet in perpendicular 
height, seemed to be very short in that clear, upper 
air. Nearly one third the atmosphere which men 
breathe was already below us, and the exertion of 
bringing wood and water to camp and spreading our 
blankets for the night made us pant. Thus the stra- 
tum of atmosphere above was thin and clear. The 
early stars as they came out were unusually large 
and lustrous, and later, when twilight was quite gone, 
the heavens seemed as populous with bright points, 
and as luminous, as in southern latitudes. After 
nightfall, the temperature of the air was at the freez- 
ing-point, and as the snow ceased to melt, the roar 
of the torrents stopped, and no sound broke the aw- 
ful solitude of the mountain after we took to our 



1 68 CALIFORNIAN PICTURES. 

blankets, except the occasional stamping of the horses 
on the clinking lava. 

It was not easy to sleep in such a place, with that 
brilliant heaven above, and the massive front of the 
peak projected like a shadow against the eastern sky, 
save where its long streaks of snow gave it a ghostly 
pallor. We often woke, and gazed long at the glo- 
rious vision overhead, or on the severe outlines of 
the peak. At last Sisson arose, declared day was 
about to break, and began making a fire. It seemed 
impossible the night was so near gone ; yet there 
in the east, right over the shoulder of the mountain, 
was a pale silvery glow that appeared to herald morn- 
ine. It brio:htened, but with a brightness like that 
of the moon, and just then the planet Venus, large 
and lambent, — " like a rich jewel in an Ethiop's 
ear," — rose above the fantastic outline of the mount- 
ain to the right. Attributing his mistake to the 
singular purity of the air at this altitude, Sisson was 
fain to seek another nap. It was not long until day- 
break, however, and we had an early meal, shivering 



ASCENT OF MOUNT SHASTA. 1 69 

until warmed by the hot tea. This dispatched, we 
began the ascent of Crater Peak, wearing our thick 
woolen clothes, and carrying iron-shod and spiked 
alpenstocks, a tin flask of cold tea, and some food, 
a man remaining behind to care for the horses. 
Reaching a more elevated part of the red lava field, 
we could see the first light of the sun on the lofty 
crest of Scott Mountain in the west, Shasta before us 
being still in cold gray, its enormous cone prevent- 
ing the light from falling on its own westerly side, 
and casting a sharply defined pyramid-shaped shadow 
thirty miles long over the valleys at its base and the 
mountain range beyond, all outside of this dark pur- 
ple shadow being in sunlight as we looked wonder- 
ingly below. We met the first direct beams of the 
sun as we reached the foot of Crater Peak, and now 
began to realize the rocky roughness of its slopes. 
Going up these was like climbing very steep stone 
stairs, except that the steps were uneven and often 
unsteady, — one rock tipping on another, so that each 
planting of the foot had to be calculated to avoid 



1 70 CALIFORNIAN PICTURES. 

slipping or toppling, — and that the placing of the 
alpenstock, which was an indispensable support, had 
also to be studied. Breathing became more and 
more difficult in the increasingly rare atmosphere, 
and but a few yards could be climbed without a rest. 
The beating of the heart was audible to each person, 
a pallor came over the face, and the eyes were 
strained in their sockets. As we looked upward from 
time to time, the rim of the flat top seemed no 
nearer. As we looked down, the large blocks we 
had overcome grew small, and the apparently fine 
debris ahead grew large when we reached it. The 
big snow-fields on either side of our camp shrunk 
into little patches ; we could no longer distinguish 
the camp itself, nor the horses. The steep edge of 
the rounded cone on the northerly side was drawn 
down across the sky in one tremendous line of rock 
that seemed a jumping-off place into the nether air. 
We were insects crawling up a slanting steeple, far 
above the world. The view below was awful in its 
depth and extent, the still obscuring smoke giving it 



ASCENT OF MOUNT SHASTA. 171 

a character of mystery and indefiniteness. There 
seemed no bound to that blue, hazy gulf ; and above, 
to the left as we climbed, was only the lofty sky-line 
of the cone, stretching up, up, up. An occasional 
field of fine debris, which slid under our weary limbs, 
made us glad to regain the securer blocks of trachyte. 
On the latter we could sit, as on benches of stone, 
panting, perspiring somewhat as the sun's heat was 
reflected from the bare, smooth rocks, but always 
enjoying the grand sensation that comes from being 
high above the world, on a narrow point of its crust. 
Under our feet, as we climbed, we heard constantly 
the gurgle and murmur of an unseen torrent, fed 
from the melting snow above and running deep below 
the thick-piled masses of rock over which we stepped. 
For two miles or more we climbed above the chan- 
nel of this hidden stream, never once catchinor the 
slightest glimpse of the water. All around the 
mountain there are subterranean torrents like this, 
which go to form the great springs that leap into 
rivers at its foot, — " water, water everywhere, nor 



172 CALIFORNIAN PICTURES. 

any drop to drink," except that in the flask you 
carry. 

At last we reached the rim of the flattened cone 
above, but not yet the top of Crater Peak. There 
was a narrow snow-field to cross, lying in a depres- 
sion, and then a small pyramid of broken trachyte, 
about five hundred feet high, capped with a portion 
of the original crater wall, to clamber up. It was 
eleven o'clock before we reached the latter point, 
which presented itself as a perpendicular ledge about 
twenty feet high, but so creviced and broken that we 
got easy hand and foot hold, and so pulled up to 
the top, where there was just about room enough 
for our party of three to recline. This narrow ledge 
is the very summit of Crater Peak, and is nearly 
thirteen thousand feet above the sea. We found 
here the small monument left by Clarence King's 
party two years before. We had been five or six 
hours toiling for this mark^ experiencing much diffl- 
culty in breathing, and even nausea, from the effects 
of the highly rarefied air. The weather was unusu- 



ASCENT OF MOUNT SHASTA. 1 73 

ally warm for the locality, and no clouds obstructed 
the direct rays of the sun. The climb was, there- 
fore, more fatiguing, and respiration more difficult, 
than they would have been had a cold air been 
blowing, or had the sun been overcast. Sometimes 
parties who make the ascent in the same month 
(September) encounter bitterly cold winds and storms 
of snow. Thomas Magee, who described his ascent 
in "Scribner's Monthly," found the cold so severe 
that it partly froze the tea in the tin canteen at his 
side. But warm or cold, the view at the summit 
amply repays all toil and hardship. Even if the 
lower country be hidden in smoke, as was partly the 
case in our experience, the mountain itself is a grand 
sight and an instructive study. Standing on the 
pinnacle of Crater Peak, its sides are seen to descend 
at a steep angle all around, and one has almost a 
dizzy sensation on realizing the immense depth into 
which he could plunge by a slight effort, or tumble 
by a reckless step. On the north side, immediately 
beneath the eye, lies the old crater, — a circular cav- 



174 CALIFORNIAN PICTURES. 

ity a mile across and a thousand feet deep, — its 
bottom and part of its steep outer and inner slopes 
covered with snow and ice. The wall of the crater 
is broken, as one would break out the side of a bowl 
for a quarter of its circumference, on the northwest- 
ern side, above Shasta Valley. The edges of this 
break must be one thousand five hundred feet long, 
and through the enormous gap thus made one looks 
from the cliff above clear down to the valley at the 
base of the mountain, nearly nine thousand feet, the 
angle of the view being fearfully steep. Shasta Val- 
ley is seen to be dotted with small volcanic cones, 
— miniatures of the Black Butte, — and beyond, along 
the western sky, are the Scott and Siskiyou mount- 
ains ; and be3'ond these again, if the air were clear, 
we could see the straight leaden line which marks the 
Pacific Ocean. On the southerly side of Crater Peak 
its slope descends to a wide gorge one thousand two 
hundred or one thousand five hundred feet deep, 
filled with frozen snow resting on a substratum of 
ice, beyond which rises the Main Peak, more than 



ASCENT OF MOUNT SHASTA. I 75 

one thousand five hundred feet higher than the top 
of Crater Peak. Its northern slope is regular and 
abrupt, but its crest is broken into several craggy 
points, chief of which are three needle-like splinters 
rising above a large basin and forming part of the 
walls of a crater ; while the southerly slope runs off 
in a long, curving, broken line, fantastically ragged 
on its sky-edge of highly colored breccia. On the 
summit are sulphur springs, hot enough to boil eggs, 
and considerable deposits of sulphur — the last relics 
of the former tremendous volcanic activity which 
covered with lava all the slopes and valley bases of 
Mount Shasta, for more than a hundred miles around. 
What remains of the crater on the Main Peak is 
filled with ice to a great depth, and from this source, 
through a cleft on the northeasterly side, descends 
the slow moving mass of the Whitney Glacier, — a 
genuine river of ice, half a mile wide and perhaps 
seven miles long, — the true character of which was 
first determined by Clarence King so recently as 
1 871. All the northerly flanks of the mountain are 



176 CALIFORNIAN PICTURES. 

largely covered with snow and ice above an eleva- 
tion of eight thousand or nine thousand feet, and on 
that side, also, there is another deep gorge between 
the two peaks. Leaving our perch above the lower 
crater, we crawl down the ledge toward this gorge, 
and cross a small pond of smooth blue ice at its base. 
It was on this level spot that Watkins pitched his 
field-tent for photographic work, and when he thought 
he had the light all shut off, found that enough still 
came through the ice floor to spoil his negatives, 
obliging him to cover that also. The surface of this 
ice, as of the large snow-field adjoining, was slightly 
melting. But the air was sensibly cooler on this 
side of the mountain, and it was a relief to be walk- 
ing again on a comparatively level surface. 

At the right of the crater there is a long dike of 
crumbling siliceous and sulphurous rock, which we 
traced half a mile in a direction nearly east and west, 
resemblinof one of the metalliferous lodes in its struct- 
ure, having side walls of trachytic rock, and being 
filled for a width of two or three feet with a white 



ASCENT OF MOUNT SHASTA. 1 77 

pasty mass, which on exposure hardens to the appear- 
ance of silicate of soda, more or less discolored with 
sulphur, fumes of which still came up through this 
curious vent, scenting the air. Here we rested for 
half an hour, ate our luncheon, and gathered speci- 
mens. A slight descent brought us to the rim of 
the crater wall, sharp as the edge of a roof, and its 
snowy slopes descending on either side steeper than 
the angle of a roof. The melting crust on this rim 
was just wide enough for us to walk in single file, 
covering our eyes with gauze to protect them from 
danger of snow-blindness. The crust had been carved 
by alternate melting and freezing, aided by the wind, 
into furrows with knife-blade edges, which would 
make hard walking on cold days. But warm as the 
day was, it was interesting to observe how slightly its 
influence penetrated the frozen snow and ice. Even 
on the steep slopes of broken rock, where no snow 
was visible, we found that ice was spread everywhere 
at a slight depth below the surface ; and as we laid 
down where this debris was finer than usual, it be^an 



I 78 CALIFORNIAN PICTURES. 

to melt only with the heat of the body. Digging a 
little with the iron point of an alpenstock, we found 
ice where we had not before suspected its existence, 
and the surface-melting of these covered ice-beds was 
the cause of many of those hidden torrents which 
ceased to run and roar after night-fall. 

Leaving the curving roof-line of the crater edge, 
and walking along the side of an abrupt incline of 
loose debris largely made up of such materials as 
composed the curious dike above described, we came 
to a projecting point where we could look up and 
down the northerly slope of the Main Peak, and 
could plainly trace the course of the Whitney Gla- 
cier for five miles. The peak on this side is three- 
pronged, and the glacier heads up between two of 
the prongs. Beginning at an angle sharper than any 
previously noticed, it soon assumes a gentler incline, 
and finally reaches the lower slope of the mountain 
nearly on a level, broadening at this point to its 
widest dimensions. The head, and all the steeper 
part of the glacier, present a surface of clean, mar- 



ASCENT OF MOUNT SHASTA. 1 79 

ble-like neve, marked with numerous transverse cre- 
vasses, which open very large cavities and expose 
walls of blue ice. The upper side of the first cre- 
vasse, near the head of the glacier, seemed to be 
quite sixty feet above the lower. The difference in 
elevation of the crevasse walls lessened, of course, 
with the reduced angle of the glacier's inclination, 
until these openings were simply even gaps across 
the ice. A mile or two below the summit the sur- 
face was burdened and partly hid with lateral mo- 
raines, which lower down completely hid the ice, save 
where the black debris was parted by an occasionally 
wide crevasse, or a portion of it had sunk bodily 
into the ice, leaving a cavity filled with blue water. 
The morainal matter had accumulated in one place 
to a height, apparently, of not less than fifty feet. 
Owing to the mildness of the preceding winter, when 
comparatively little snow fell, followed by a very long 
season of clear, warm weather through spring and 
summer, the surface of the neve was much reduced 
in thickness, and the line of recent glacial cutting 



l8o CALIFORNIAN PICTURES. 

along the banks of volcanic material was boldly ex- 
hibited. The northerly and easterly slopes of the 
mountain, which are bare of timber far below the 
timber-line on the other side, are composed of blocks 
of trachyte, lava, and pumice, succeeded by an ex- 
tensive outflow, lower down, of basalt. Into this 
material the stream flowing from the Whitney Gla- 
cier sinks, disappearing under the mass of the ter- 
minal moraine. 

Beyond this glacier, easterly, is a smaller one, 
named variously the McCloud and Mud Creek Gla- 
cier, which was partly visible from our last point of 
observation. We could hear the larger ice-stream 
constantly cracking, and at intervals heavy detona- 
tions succeeded to this sound. We could hear, also, 
the roar and rumble of torrents in half a dozen dif- 
ferent directions. But Shasta bears on its easterly 
flank a still greater glacier, — one not less than three 
or four miles wide, — which was named by its dis- 
coverer, Clarence King, the Agassiz Glacier. A trip 
of sixty miles around the base of the mountain is 



ASCENT OF MOUNT SHASTA. l8l 

necessary to approach it, so we caught no ghmpse of 
it. Mr. King, in his fascinating record of " Mount- 
aineering in the Sierra Nevada," has described its 
appearance, and his perilous climb over it, with vivid 
power. One remark he makes with reference to it 
applies generally to the other glaciers on Shasta ; it 
is this : " The idea of a mountain glacier, formed from 
Swiss or Indian views, is always of a stream of ice 
walled in by more or less lofty ridges. Here a great 
curved cover of ice flows down the conical surface 
of a volcano without lateral walls, a few lava pinna- 
cles and inconspicuous piles of debris separating it 
from the next glacier." Except towards its head, the 
Whitney Glacier evenly fills the depression it occu- 
pies, much as the Sacramento River fills its channel 
on reaching the broad valley. 

Apart from its isolation, the sudden uplift of nearly 
three fourths of its entire bulk, and its peculiar beauty 
of color. Mount Shasta is remarkable for being the 
only mountain in California whose flanks are bur- 
dened with living glaciers. The ice-field on Mount 



1 82 CALIFORNIAN PICTURES. 

Lyell, in the Yosemite region, which has been de- 
scribed as a glacier, is asserted by Whitney and King- 
not to deserve that title; although Mr. Muir, who 
has given the subject close study, declares that on 
Mount Lyell and on several companion peaks true 
glaciers exist, but of feeble vitality. The taller peak 
of Mount Whitney, five hundred miles south of 
Shasta, in a latitude where the snow-line extends 
much above the limit in northern California and Or- 
egon, is without a glacier, as it is also without those 
singular fields of rock-covered ice which exist on the 
upper slopes of Shasta. With the exception of this 
beautiful California peak, no mountains in the United 
States bear true glaciers but Mount Hood, in Ore- 
gon, Mount Rainiei' and adjacent peaks, in Wash- 
ington Territory, and the Arctic peaks of Alaska, 
whose glaciers push quite down to the sea and send 
off fleets of icebergs. The grand glacier on Mount 
Rainier, discovered, we believe, by officers of the 
United States Coast Survey, has been described to 
the writer as rivaling, if not surpassing, anything in 



ASCENT OF MOUNT SHASTA. 183 

the Alps. Considering how easily Shasta can be 
reached, and with what perfect safety it can be 
climbed and examined, except on the larger ice-fields, 
it is remarkable that it is not more sought by tour- 
ists. A knowledge of glacial phenomena is now uni- 
versally acknowledged to be of leading importance 
in the study of the earths superficial conforniation, 
and much could be learned in this field of inquiry 
on Shasta, where not alone living but the track of 
extinct glaciers may be profitably observed, for in 
every direction around the mountain exist the evi- 
dences of former glacial action. 

It was with o^reat reluctance, in the middle of the 
afternoon, that we left our perch overlooking the 
Whitney Glacier to return to camp. It was hard 
work to climb up the slope of sliding debris we had 
just descended from Crater Peak, and our legs trem- 
bled when we reached the icy rim of the crater and 
faced its blinding glare. Resting again at the very 
top, we gazed lingeringly at the higher peak to the 
left, with its cascade of neve and ice plunging down 



184 CALIFORNIAN PICTURES. 

SO precipitously for thousands of feet; at the deep 
crater bowl to the right, almost under our feet ; at 
the cone-dotted, yellow, hazy valley of Shasta, seen 
through the broken wall of the crater over a mile 
and a half below ; at the violet crest of the Scott 
Mountain range beyond, and the dark cone of Black 
Butte thrust up in the trough between. But for the 
smoke, we should have seen to the northward the 
whole Klamath region, with its lakes and lava-beds, 
where the Modocs played their miserable tragedy ; 
should have seen the snowy peaks of the Oregon 
Cascade Range ; should have seen to the east the 
desert plateau of Nevada as far as the Utah line; 
should have seen to ; the south the trough-like valley 
of the Sacramento nearly to the mouth of that stream, 
with all the bold crest-line of the Sierra Nevada 
range on one side, and the softer swell of the Coast 
Range on the other, with a strip of the Pacific Ocean 
near Humboldt Bay. Mr. A. Roman, who was one 
of a small party that climbed Shasta in April, 1856, 
— a most perilous season, — told the writer that the 



ASCENT OF MOUNT SHASTA. 1 85 

atmosphere at that time was wonderfully clear, and 
the view simply stupendous. He declares that he 
saw distinctly all the high peaks, from the Washing- 
ton group on the north to the Sierra peaks around 
Lake Tahoe, and the Coast Range peaks about San 
Francisco, — a distance on a direct line of nearly 
eight hundred miles ! Within the limits of this view 
the Sacramento Valley and the topography of the 
Sierra Nevada were, he says, revealed with won- 
derful distinctness. The air was as if purged and 
filtered, and presented only a slight gray film be- 
tween the eye and the most distant objects. There 
seemed no limit to the vision except the convexity 
of the earth's surface. Probably in very clear weather 
the view extends for quite five hundred miles. Mr. 
Roman's party, and himself in particular, suffered 
dreadfully from the cold on the summit. He took a 
thermometer from his clothes to observe the temper- 
ature, and as he held it in his hand the mercury 
speedily dropped to 12° below zero. How much 
lower it would have gone he could not tell, for his 



1 86 CALIFORNIAN PICTURES. 

Stiffened fingers lost their grip, the instrument fell 
from his numb hand and was broken. He was snow- 
blind and frost-bitten on returning to Yreka, and so 
altered in appearance that his own brother did not 
know him. Sisson told us that he had been up the 
mountain much later in the spring, or in early sum- 
mer, when the winds were so cold and strong that 
he had to cling to the rocks with his hands, when 
scaling the summit of the Main Peak, to prevent 
being: blown off and hurled to destruction. Yet as 
we had this talk the air was no cooler than that of 
a balmy winter day at San Francisco, and our thick 
woolen clothes, while we exercised, were almost bur- 
densome. Mr. John' Muir, who ascended the mount- 
ain alone in November, 1874, encountered a snow- 
storm on the very summit, but his hardy habits 
protected him from injury. Waking one morning 
after it subsided he saw a sublime spectacle, which 
he thus describes : " A boundless wilderness of storm- 
clouds of different age and ripeness were congregated 
over all the landscape for thousands of square miles. 



ASCENT OF MOUNT SHASTA. 187 

colored gray and purple, and pearl and glowing white, 
among which I seemed to be floating, while the cone 
of Shasta above and the sky was tranquil and full of 
the sun. It seemed not so much an ocean as a land 
of clouds, undulating hill and dale, smooth purple 
plains, and silvery mountains of cumuli, range over 
range, nobly diversified with peaks and domes, with 
cool shadows between, and with here and there a 
wide trunk caiion, smooth and rounded as if eroded 
by glaciers." 

Resting on the top crag of Crater Peak before de- 
scending, we observed more closely the utter absence 
of vesfetation for thousands of feet below. After 
leaving the Pinus Jlexilis at our camp on the lava, 
where there were sparse bunches of a hardy grass, 
and a few plants like portulacca growing in shady 
crevices, an occasional lichen was all that appeared, 
and at the summit the lichens were no longer to be 
seen. On one snow-field there was a slight trace 
left of Tocofciis nivalis, — the " red snow," so called. 
— a very low form of vegetable life, which is some- 



1 88 CALIFORNIAN PICTURES. 

times so abundant on this mountain as to color the 
foot-prints in the snow blood-red. For three or four 
thousand feet below, the eye took in nothing but a 
wreck of rocky matter, of red and black lava-flow, 
of gray-colored scoriaceous debris, except where the 
snow and ice covered the surface and made it even 
more arctic and desolate. Yet animal life was not 
quite absent. Lifting a piece of loose rock near the 
surveyor's monument, we revealed a little colony of 
lady-bugs, of a dark cinnamon color, with many 
darker spots. The tiny creatures crawled away feebly, 
making no effort to fly. What they could live on 
there we could ilot conjecture. A few snow-birds 
were twittering a thousand or two thousand feet be- 
low, and nearly up to the very crest of the Main Peak 
we saw a solitary California vulture wheeling slowly 
around. Sisson says he once found a dead squirrel 
on that peak, which had probably been dropped there 
by a bird of prey, and at another time he saw there 
a living mouse. The large-horned mountain sheep, 
apparently the same species as that found in the 



ASCENT OF MOUNT SHASTA. 189 

Rocky Mountains, has occasionally been seen near 
the summit, and once an animal thought to be an 
ibex was observed. 

Going down the rocky slope of Crater Peak, we 
heard again the gurgle of the hidden torrent. The 
descent was very tiresome, and a little hazardous to 
one's limbs, for a fall among the larger masses or a 
slide in the small debris might easily result in a fract- 
ure. Earlier in the year much labor is saved by 
sliding down on the snow. But we reached the base 
at last in safety, very weary, and glad to put foot 
again on the lava-flow that led to camp, where we 
arrived almost too weary to care for the red sunset 
through bars of clouds, which was repeated in the 
western sky, reminding us of the appearance of that 
luminary to Campbell's " last man." How sweet sleep 
was that night ! No more deception with the morn- 
ing star. Again at sunrise, however, we were off, 
this time mounted and bound homeward. Facing 
the west as we rode down the slope of the mount- 
ain, we saw once more the sharp cone of its shadow, 



I90 CALIFORNIAN PICTURES. 

lying far across the valleys at its foot, up the flank of 
Scott Mountain beyond, and across its snowy crest, 
the faint light trembling along its purple edges and 
gradually crawling into its place as the shadow of 
the great peak retreated. The trail down the mount- 
ain is steep and rough for horses, and very tiresome 
for riders. The comparative level of the forest-belt 
is welcome. In the black soil of the fir wood we 
often saw the fresh track of bears. Arrived at the 
only spring on the way down, we saw three deer. 
The graceful creatures moved off very slowly and 
safely, Sisson wi/th his gun, fortunately for them, hav- 
ing turned into a side trail some distance back. 

At the house in Strawberry Valley once more, 
after a journey of two and a half days, we turned to 
look at the grand peak with its twin cones — all its 
ruogedness cone, its longr outlines and vast front 
smoothed by distance, and a sunny haze clothing it 
in tender beauty. Often since we have revisited it 
in dreams, and longed, on waking, for its restful 
solitude. 



THE MEADOW LARK. 

BERKELEY, FEBRUARY 23, 1874. 



Trill, happy lark, thy brief, sweet lay, 

From out a breast as brown 
As were the hills in autumn day 

Before the rains came down. 

The beaming sun, the dripping showers, 

Are in thy simple notes ; 
Earth smiles to hear in grass and flowers, 

And bright the cloudlet floats. 

On Alameda's mountain line 

The violet's tender hue, 
With dappled spots of shade and shine, 

Is painted 'gainst the blue. 



192 CALIFORNIAN PICTURES. 

The meadow slopes to meet the bay, 

The gulls in flocks uprise ; 
And far above the waters gray 

Soars purple Tamalpais. 

Beyond is ocean's wide expanse, 
Where, through the Golden Gate, 

The ships with snowy canvas dance, 
Or on the breezes wait. 

Fair day, bright scene ! The hill, the tree. 

The poppy's running flame, 
The silver cloud, the sunny sea. 

Spring's coming all proclaim. 

But sweeter, dearer, far than all 

I love the liquid sound 
That from the sky the lark lets falls 

Whene'er he spurns the ground. 

Though all too short, his carols give 
Back to my heart once more 

The thoughtless joy that used to live 
In happy days of yore. 



iiMiiiiiilliililiiilii'i'i 







V 



THE GEYSERS. 



YosEMiTE, the Big Trees, and the Geysers are 
thought by Cahfornia tourists to be the great won- 
der of the Golden State, next to her matchless cli- 
mate and the modesty of her people. Much has 
been written about the marvelous gorge in the Si- 
erra, where rivers are flung over granite precipices; 
and the diameter and altitude of the giant sequoia 
are familiar enough to the ordinary reader ; but less 
has been said about the Geysers, although they pos- 
sess features of remarkable interest. Geysers they 
are not, in the sense in which the word is usually 
understood ; and the traveler who expects to see, on 
reaching this locality, high fountains of boiling water 
like those in Iceland and the Yellowstone region, 
13 



194 CALIFORNIAN PICTURES. 

will be disappointed. Yet are they richly worth the 
journey, as the journey itself is its own sufficient re- 
ward without any other motive than the scenery 
along the route. Suppose, reader, you have crossed 
the Sierra Nevada, breathed its exhilarating air, 
scented with the aromatic odor of its mao-nificent 
pines and cedars ; been enraptured with the softer 
beauties at its base, hazy with the heat of its golden 
summer, or stretching far the clear perspective of its 
verdurous and flowery spring, and then have met on 
the Bay of San Francisco the cool air that blows in 
from the Pacific through the Golden Gate ; you still 
have not exhausted the contrasts and pleasures of 
California scenery. Resting a while in the many- 
hilled metropolis, which sprawls over a narrow pen- 
insula of sand and rock, resolve to go to the Gey- 
sers before you try the all-else-belittling grandeur of 
Yosemite. This is the route. Besides the broad 
Sacramento Valley, two narrow Coast Range valleys 
open from the bay on the north, — Sonoma and 
Napa, — each some forty miles long by an average 



THE GEYSERS. 195 

width not exceeding three miles, nearly level, and 
bounded by high ridges of metamorphic rock of the 
cretaceous period, which sometimes break down into 
low-rolling hills that invade the plain, giving its sur- 
face a picturesque variety. Napa Valley — named 
from a nearly extinct tribe of aborigines — is the 
inner one of the two. Like its companion, it is trav- 
ersed for a part of its length by a creek, navigable 
so far as the tide extends, which empties into the 
bay through a wide expanse of salt marsh. Through 
either valley the mountain road that leads to the 
Geysers may be reached. The usual route, however, 
is through Napa Valley. A steamboat sail of twenty- 
five miles from San Francisco to Vallejo begins the 
trip delightfully, affording a fine view of the city, — 
dusty, gusty, and gray on its vaporous heights ; of 
the grimly fortified Alcatraz Island, which lies like 
a snag in the mouth of the harbor ; of the Golden 
Gate, with its red brick fort on one side, its white 
light-house on the other, and brown or green head- 
lands, fleets of inward or outward bound sails pass- 



196 CALIFORNIAN PICTURES. 

ing between ; of Mount Tamalpais, that lifts its pur- 
ple cone in tender beauty to the right, nearly two 
thousand six hundred feet above the sea it over- 
looks ; of the Alameda slopes and ridges that bound 
the eastern shore, topped by Mount Diablo, a still 
higher peak ; of the red rock islets in the upper bay, 
whitened on their tops by birds that hover or settle 
there ; of the bare, low, mound-like hills that open as 
the boat approaches Mare Island Straits, that are 
either brown or green according to the season, but 
always graceful in outline, and suggesting rumpled 
velvet, with their slight indentations and mottled 
shadows ; over all this varied scene a blue sky dashed 
with gray, which reflects its own hue in the dancing, 
sparkling waters of the bay and melts into hazy lilac 
around the hilly horizon. 

Mare Island, the site of what is at present the 
most important navy -yard in the United States, is 
a long, flat body of land, very slightly elevated above 
the water, and on the western side of the straits. 
The opposite shore is hilly, its lower slopes covered 



THE GEYSERS. 197 

with the thrifty town of Vallejo, once the capital of 
the State, and now the raih-oad and trade centre of 
the northern coast-valley region. Here we take the 
cars for Napa and Calistoga, beginning a railroad 
ride of forty-four miles through the Rasselas Valley 
of reality, whose charms surpass those of Wyoming 
as much as the red tints of this semi-tropical clime 
surpass the cold colors of the north. The trip is 
usually made toward evening, when the atmospheric 
effects are most beautiful. As the valley is filled 
with settlers and contains half a dozen pretty towns, 
its surface is marked with cultivated fields, with rich 
masses of green or golden grain, orchards laden with 
blossoms or fruit, vineyards whose cleanly kept vines 
shine in the sun as though they smiled over the 
genial harvest they are maturing. The natural feat- 
ures of the valley are park-like groves of oak, which 
grow thickest where they belt the course of the 
creek, and are there mixed with sycamore, alders, wil- 
lows, and a plentiful undergrowth of wild vines and 
bushes. The spaces in the oak-openings which are 



198 



CALIFORNIAN PICTURES. 



not cultivated are free from underbrush, the soil bear- 
ing a native crojD of wild oats and flowers, the deep 




Valley Oaks 

orange tint of the large California poppy {Papavera 
EschschoUzia) being conspicuous among the latter 



THE GEYSERS. 199 

in spring and summer. When the oat-crop is ripe, 
its brilliant gold colors the landscape in every direc- 
tion over the valley, far up the lower slopes of the 
adjoining ridges, and often even to their very tops. 
The several varieties of evergreen oaks, with their 
short trunks, cauliflower-shaped masses of intensely 
dark green foliage, and sharp shadows, then seem like 
oases in the hot expanse — grateful islets of verdure 
in a sea of shimmering yellow light. On the roll- 
ing lands most exposed to sea winds, the oaks, con- 
torted, dwarfed, and thorny-leaved as the holly, nes- 
tle together in groups and fit their slanting boughs 
to the outlines of the hills, making cool, sequestered 
bowers of the most inviting character. Towards the 
upper end of the valley the massive trunks, tall 
forms, and expansive foliage of the deciduous oaks, 
present a striking contrast to these hardy dwarfs 
who have to struggle for life. The willow-oak, re- 
markable for the pendant strips of leafage nearly 
touching the ground, from which it derives its name, 
is particularly conspicuous. One notes, too, the 



200 CALIFORNIAN PICTURES. 

great rounded masses of mistletoe clinging to sev- 
eral varieties of oak, and the scarlet-leaved vines 
that sometimes cling about their trunks, rivaling in 
color the plumage of the woodpecker who digs his 
acorn-holes in the bark above. Darting through 
one of these noble groves, venerable with mosses, 
one has charming views of the mountains on either 
side the valley, their ravines dark with timber, their 
upper slopes clad with pine and fir, their northern 
and sea exposures luxuriant with forests of the red- 
wood, own cousin to the Sequoia gigantea. The 
outline of the ridges is sometimes made very pict- 
uresque, not to say fantastic, by outcropping masses 
of metamorphic sandstone, cut into mural or battle- 
mented shapes by the elements. When the atmos- 
phere wraps them in its haze, and they recede into 
skyey blendings of all violet and purple tints, their 
contrast with the softening gold and green of the 
valley-levels is most exquisite. And when the sun 
sinks behind the more distant mountain masses they 
glow through as if molten and transparent, or no 



THE GEYSERS. 20I 

more substantial than the cloud that may be burn- 
ing above them, until the sun gathers back to him- 
self all the arrows he shot over the plain, and the 
slant shadows spread, mingle, and deepen into twi- 
light. 

At the head of Napa Valley stands Mount St. 
Helena, the culminating point of the ridges between 
the Bay of San Francisco and Clear Lake. It is a 
mass of volcanic rock four thousand three hundred 
and forty-three feet high ; the apparently single point 
of its cone, like nearly all volcanic peaks, separating 
into two as it is approached or circled. Most of its 
^ bare bulk is visible, rising like an irregular pyramid 
at the end of the long valley-vista, — a grand object 
far and near, whether in its customary suit of gray 
or flashing in the splendor of its evening robe ; con- 
tinually shifting its color and form as it is seen close 
or far, on this side or that ; opening its rocky breast 
at last to nature's softening touch of spring and 
brook and tree, and drawing up about its awful flanks 
some of the verdurous beauty of the valley. One of 



202 



CALIFORNIAN PICTURES. 



the best views of this mountain, on its southerly side, 
is that from CaHstoga, where the cars leave the 




Mount St. Helena. 



tourist at night, and where he takes a coach for the 
Geysers. Calistoga is at the head of Napa Valley 
and the mountains here inclose a small circular plain 



THE GEYSERS. 203 

studded with large oaks, and charged with thermal 
springs that send up little puffs of vapor filling the 
air with mineral smells. The thriving and pretty 
town found here grew about the hotels and cottages 
first erected to accommodate visitors to these springs. 
It owes its existence to the enterprise of one man, 
Samuel Brannan, who took the little valley a solitude 
and has peopled it with a prosperous community of 
farmers and traders. His expenditures for improve- 
ments here were very large, and include such objects 
as vineyards, wine and brandy vaults, mulberry plan- 
tations for silk-culture, etc. He was also a prominent 
actor in the railroad. The planting of ornamental 
trees and shrubs about the springs was thought a 
doubtful experiment, by reason of the alkali and heat 
the springs diffuse through the soil. But the plantings 
throve slowly, and Calistoga is growing under the 
shadow of its grand mountain, which the plain mim- 
ics by a small isolated cone (Mount Lincoln) that 
rises from its centre. Soda and sulphur are the 
principal mineral constituents of the thermal waters, 



204 CALIFORNIAN PICTURES. 

whose heat rises to the boiHng point. In the hills 
near by are the remains of a petrified forest, the 
stony trunks of oak being quite numerous. When 
growing they were evidently buried by an earth- 
quake shock, exposed to a watery solution of volcanic 
matter, which silicified them, and subsequently ele- 
vated again, and partly uncovered by the washing 
away of the enveloping earth. Mount St. Helena was 
once the centre of volcanic disturbance in this region, 
and threw its ashes and lava over a good part of 
the surrounding country. The hot springs at many 
points in the valley and hills, the pumice and obsid- 
ian scattered widely over the surface, the masses of 
volcanic rock observable, all indicate a time when 
this was a volcanic centre. And these indications 
extend northward at least as far as Clear Lake, some 
forty miles distant, where deposits of sulphur and a 
lake richly charged with borax are found. The earth- 
quakes still felt occasionally through this region are 
not alarmingly severe. In December, 1859, a tre- 
mendous explosion was heard at Mount St. Helena, 



THE GEYSERS. 2 05 

which shook the earth; but this the state geologist, 
Prof. J. D. Whitney, thinks may have been caused 
by heavy masses of rock in some of the subterranean 
cavities known to exist in these volcanic regions. 
During the winter a new hot spring burst out of the 
eastern side of Mount Lincoln, scarcely more than 
fifty feet above the valley-level, and has continued to 
puff away ever since. This circumstance excited less 
comment in the vicinity than the increased number 
of trout in the mountain-streams and the abundance 
of wild pigeons. Your true Californian is never 
much surprised or dismayed at anything. When the 
terrible earthquake at Inyo, in the southeastern cor- 
ner of the State, was at its height, the survivors of 
the first shock amused themselves by inventing names 
for the various phenomena, the heaviest of the artil- 
lery-like discharges from the vicinity of Mount Whit- 
ney being called "the hundred-pound Parrott of the 
Sierra," while as the ground began to heave and 
shake again, the bold fellows would cry out, " There 
she goes ! Brace yourselves ! " 



206 CALIFORNIAN PICTURES. 

Mount St. Helena was ascended in 1841 by a 
Russian naturalist, Wasnossensky, who named it in 
honor of his empress, and left on the summit a 
copper plate, inscribed with the names of himself 
and his companion. This plate is now preserved in 
the museum of the California Geological Survey. 
The Russians did a good deal of exploring in Cali- 
fornia in early days, not alone for scientific purposes, 
but with some eye to commercial and political aggran- 
dizement. They left their name at several points in 
the northern interior, including the Russian River 
and the lovely valley it waters, which opens north of 
Sonoma Valley and lies across the ridge to the north- 
west of Napa Valley. The tourist who is acquainted 
with these facts regards the country on the route to 
the Geysers with more interest. 

Early in the morning a stage leaves Calistoga for 
the Geysers, distant twenty-eight miles. This "stage" 
is simply a very strong open spring wagon, seating 
nine to twelve persons. Last year it was not un- 
common for half a dozen such waQ:ons to make the 



THE GEYSERS. 207 

trip daily. The road soon quits the valley, ascends a 
ranee of wooded hills to the northward, crosses it at 
a height of three or four hundred feet above the val- 
ley, and seven hundred and fifty above the sea, and 
descends to the northwest into Knight's Valley which 
is drained into Russian River. There are numerous 
creeks in this region, leading to many picturesque 
side valleys heading in the hills. Broad natural mead- 
ows are dotted with groves of oak, and in the spring 
months the green levels and slopes are spangled with 
flowers, including the blue lupin, larkspur, purple 
primrose, yellow poppy, and a profusion of buttercups 
and daisies. The streams run tinkling over gravelly 
beds, larks and linnets sing joyously, flocks of black- 
birds chatter musically as they whirl in gusty flights 
together, and the clear air exhilarates like champagne. 
Mount St. Helena is kept to the right, revealing its 
sculpture boldly as it is neared, but never losing its 
magic tints. The ridges dividing a series of inter- 
vales are thickly wooded with oak and pine, with 
here and there a redwood astray, a madrona or man- 



208 CALIFORNIAN PICTURES. 

zanita, whose brown or red bark and waxen leaves 
make them very striking objects. If it is spring, 
big clumps of buckeye will thrust out their bristhng 
spears of scented bloom. Where the soil is bare, it is 
red, except in the valleys, where it is black or brown, 
while the rocks are stained with lichens. Thus there 
is a constant feast of color, — gold and purple pre- 
dominating in summer, emerald and red and violet in 
the spring, but always an undertone of pearly gray, 
which St. Helena's cone seems to oive out as the 

O 

key for the whole beautiful composition. 

As the Geyser mountains are neared, the valleys 
narrow to ribbons, run into hills, and end in a dense 
forest glade, where lighter wagons are taken for the 
ascent. From this point teams are not allowed to 
travel in opposite directions ; the road is too narrow 
and dangerous to pass. Hence the teams going out 
and in meet in this glade, composed of lofty firs in 
great part, and having the hushed air and soft car- 
pet of a true forest. The summit of the first range 
of hills is about one thousand seven hundred feet 



THE GEYSERS. 209 

above the station at its foot, or nearly two thousand 
three hundred feet above the sea, and the ascent is 
made in a distance of about four miles. These hills 
form the lower slope of Geyser Peak, which is three 
thousand four hundred and seventy-one feet high, and 
forms one of the triangulating stations of the United 
States Coast Survey, being plainly visible from the 
ocean and San Francisco. It is a conical peak, like 
all the dominating points of this range, and com- 
mands a magnificent view. The stage-road ascends 
its flanks very deviously, passing alternately through 
dense thickets of underbrush or bits of coniferous 
woods ; then across deep gulches, watered with clear 
trout streams ; then emerging into open spaces, and 
winding along the edge of a precipitous descent, 
opening far vistas of colossal scenery, rank on rank 
of diminishing hills thrusting up sharp tops of fir or 
pine, until these are lost in the blue gulf nearly two 
thousand feet below. Everywhere, except in the for- 
est belts and thickets of brush, the more or less 
rounding hills of the Coast Range bear a luxuriant 
14 



2IO CALIFORNIAN PICTURES. 

growth of wild oats. The clump or masses of tree 
verdure relieved against these golden slopes present 
an indescribably brilliant effect, which is enhanced 
by the dark blue of the chasms below and the purple 
or violet of the remote ranges beyond. 

Resting the sweating horses for a few minutes on 
one of these wild harvest spaces, and looking about, 
the passengers have a view never to be forgotten. 
Across a gulf to the east rises the commanding bulk 
of Mount St. Helena. To the west and south de- 
scend the hills we have been climbing, and others 
beyond them, leading the eye to Russian River Val- 
ley, where the stream makes a sharp turn and can 
be traced on its gleaming course for many miles. 
The receding hills, with their shaggy coating of for- 
est and chemisal, are softened with a violet haze. 
The valley shimmers in its heat, and through a cleft 
in the far blue wall of the outer Coast Range the 
sunny Pacific is seen melting into heaven. The air 
is wonderfully clear and luminous, lending the charm 
of its tints to the magnificent landscape, without ob- 



THE GE YSERS. •211 

scuring it, so that we seem to be looking at it, 
almost dizzily, through a transparent medium which 
only reflects an image. Such a sight intoxicates 
the senses almost to pain. The world never ap- 
peared so lovely, nor our own nature so capacious 
and receptive. It is with a sigh of regret that we 
feel the wagon start and dash onward ; but the ex- 
treme beauty of the woods is another delight. The 
madroiia has become a tree, and its smooth mahog- 
any limbs and large waxen leaves are rich beyond 
any other tree in the forest. Then the laurel and 
the bay, with their perennial green, the maple and 
the alder in moist places, and the blooming buckeye, 
fill up the spaces between the leather-colored col- 
umns of redwood and cedar, and the straight shafts 
of pine and fir, towering above all. As the road 
winds higher towards Geyser Peak, it leaves the 
forest and passes through a dense thicket of chem- 
isal shrubbery, oak, laurels, small bays, and ceano- 
thus. The last, called California lilac, is covered till 
late in the spring with powdery blossoms that give 



212 CALIFORNIAN PICTURES. 

forth honeyed odors. Masses of stained and black- 
ened rocks, serpentine, sandstone, and trap, rise here 
and there, giving the nearing summit a desolate 
look, which is increased by the few contorted pines 
that suck a feeble life from the crevices where they 
grow. A narrow ridge, called the Hog's Back, — 
just wide enough for the wagon, — connects two 
spurs of the range at this point, separating Sulphur 
and Pluton creeks. It is the parapet of a wall 
whose sides slope at a sharp angle a thousand feet, 
and riding over it at a high speed one looks into 
a chasm on either hand, catches breath, and hopes 
the harness and wheels may be strong. The Hog's 
Back, however, forms part of the old road which is 
not traveled now, except by daring tourists who in- 
sist upon going back by that route especially to en- 
joy a sensation. The new road keeps more to the 
flank of the ridge, and curves about precipices in- 
stead of crossing them. Both roads approach within 
two or three hundred feet of the summit of Geyser 
Peak, and then plunge suddenly down its farther 



THE GEYSERS. 213 

and steeper flank to the canon of Pluton River, 
on whose right bank are the Geysers. The greatest 
elevation either road attains is about three thousand 
two hundred feet. As the Geyser Hotel is one thou- 
sand six hundred and ninety-two feet above the sea, 
the descent is about one thousand five hundred feet. 
This is made on the old road in a distance of two 
miles. Foss, the proprietor of the road and stage 
line, and one of the celebrated " whips " of Califor- 
nia, used to call this steep descent " the drop," and 
as he began it, would tell the passengers to look at 
their watches and hold on to their seats and hats. 
He would then crack his whip, and the horses — 
sometimes six to a wagon — would start at a keen 
run and make the distance in nine and a half min- 
utes. There are thirty-five sharp turns in " the 
drop," and the road, just wide enough for the team, 
frequently hugs the edge of steep, rocky precipices, 
whose sides and bottoms made a concavity of brist- 
ling fir-tops, hiding the stream whose murmur comes 
faintly up. The new road makes the descent to the 



214 CALIFORNIAN PICTURES. 

canon of Pluton Creek, or river, by a longer route, 
with more curves, in a lighter grade ; but is equally 
narrow, and follows closely, for long distances, the 
steep precipices that line the creek. Over this, too 
the teams are driven at a rate of speed frightful to 
timid persons unaccustomed to mountain stage-travel 
in California. But dangerous as these roads seem, 
not a sino^le accident has occurred on them, for the 
wagons are kept very strong, the horses are of the 
best roadster stock, and the drivers masters of their 
trade. The great speed made, instead of increasing 
the danger, lessens it. Yet there are persons in al- 
most every wagonful of passengers who pale and 
shrink as the vehicle dashes wildly down, and as 
they see below them, under the very wheels, as it 
were, the yawning chasms that seem to threaten 
death. Women sometimes sink into the bottom of 
the wagon, and hide from their eyes the spectacle so 
dreadful to them, that is so sublime to cooler heads 
and calmer nerves. When the wao^on reaches the 
hotel, however, all its tenants have a half wild look. 



THE GEYSERS. 215 

as if they had just come down in a balloon and 
were thankful it had " lit." Nothing can be more 
wildly romantic than the scenery of the Pluton 
canon. On one side rises a steep mountain, rock- 
ribbed and clad with stately firs, mixed with ever- 
green oaks, bay trees, and madrofias; on the other 
side sinks a precipice into a deep gorge, crowded 
with a richer variety of foliage, through which are 
caught glimpses of a stream making foamy leaps over 
rocky rapids, or expanding into still pools, in whose 
depths fishes can be seen like images fixed in glass. 
Here a small brook comes tumbling down the mount- 
ain, creaming a mass of black rock a hundred feet 
high, which is margined with ferns, splotched with 
lichens, and shadowed by arching trees, out of which 
the cascade seems to leap. There, on the right, far 
across the canon, other mountains rise, sparsely tim- 
bered with oak, yellow or green with wild oats, 
scarred with deep red gulches from summit to base, 
and — yes, actually smoking like a volcano from many 
an ashen heap or hollow. The air is charged with 



2l6 CALIFORNIAN PICTURES. 

sulphurous smells, and as the sweating horses swing 
rapidly around the last curve of the road, by the last 
dizzy brink, we realize that there are the Geysers. 

The Geyser Hotel is a lightly constructed frame- 
house, L-shaped, with double piazzas on all sides. 
It stands amid a grove of tall firs and massive ever- 
green oaks, on a narrow bench about one hun- 
dred feet above Pluton Creek, the mountains ris- 
ing straight behind it. This creek is a tributary of 
Russian River. It heads up towards Mount St. Hel- 
ena, and until it comes within the influence of the 
Geysers is a charming trout stream. Its banks and 
bed are extremely rocky. Huge boulders of granite 
and sandstone choke its course, and black volcanic 
masses rise in frowning cliffs by its side, sometimes 
softened with a drapery of vines, and bearing trees on 
their creviced tops. Great blocks of conglomerate, 
apparently formed in situ by the mineral constitu- 
ents of the waters percolating through the diluvium, 
are also seen obstructing the creek. Occasionally it 
has cut through a bed of this conglomerate, which 



THE GEYSERS. 217 

forms its banks. For all this ruggedness the creek 
is very picturesque, and has many spots of gentle 
beauty where the sun beams athwart quiet pools, 
and maples and pepper trees mix their gentle grace 
with the sombre foliage of fir and bay and ever- 
green oak. Pleasant paths wind along its banks un- 
der archways of green, where ferns and flowers thrive 
and coax the hand to pluck. Between the rocks 
round plats of tuft-grass make soft stepping-places. 
The quail is heard calling his mate in the thicket, 
and the robin chants his song at morn and eve in 
the tree-tops. 

The best time to visit the Geysers is early in the 
morning, before the sun has risen above the mount- 
ain tops and drank up the vapors. From the red 
riven side facing the hotel, columns and clouds of 
steam may then be seen rising to a height of two 
hundred feet or more, obscuring the landscape like a 
fog just rolling in from the sea. The same phenom- 
enon is visible, but in a less degree, towards night. 
It is pleasanter to take a good rest at night, to en- 



2 I 8 CALIFORNIAN PICTURES. 

joy the concert of the birds in the grove about the 
house, listen to the soughing of the firs, the soft roar 
of the creek, and the distant puffings and gurgita- 
tions of the Geysers ; and then from your bedroom 
opening upon a piazza, gaze out, as you He with 
open door and window, in that bahny climate, at the 
keen stars beaming with their eternal quiet over that 
strange scene. Up before the sun, don an old suit, 
swallow a cup of coffee, and join the laughing party 
of tourists o:athered about the Q-uide on the fenced 
space before the house. Every one takes a " geyser 
pony," — that is, a stout stick to help him or her 
over the rocks and springs, — and then all start down 
the trail, Indian file, to Pluton Creek. Before reach- 
ing it, the guide, who perhaps is the jolly landlord 
himself, points out a chalybeate spring of fine tonic 
properties, whose waters his guests imbibe, mixed 
with soda-water. The banks are charged with iron 
salts for a great distance up and down, and their 
solutions have given the earth its red tinge, and 
hardened the gravel-beds into a semi-metallic mass. 



THE GEYSERS. 219 

In curious contrast, at the crossing to Geyser Cafion, 
is the whey-hke tint of the water in the creek, which 
for a quarter of a mile or more is affected by the 
sulphur discharges, some of which bubble up through 
the very bed of the creek itself. Thermal springs of 
various sorts are numerous along the creek, especially 
on its right bank, for several miles ; but the most 
remarkable are those facing the hotel. The prevail- 
ing rocks are metamorphic sandstone, silicious slates, 
and serpentine. Their stratification is boldly exposed, 
and dips at a sharp angle to the line of the creek. 
Through the lines of fracture or cleavage, from the 
water's edge to a height of fifty or a hundred feet up 
the slope opposite, where the creek is crossed by a 
rustic bridge, numerous springs and steam jets escape, 
coloring the face of the slacking rocks vividly with 
the yellow, red, and white salts of sulphur, iron, lime, 
and magnesia that they deposit. The springs are of 
various temperatures, some of them exceeding 200°. 
One forms quite a large stream, and is led by troughs 
into a row of small shanties, where its steam is used 



220 CALIFORNIAN PICTURES. 

for bathing, the bather jumping immediately after 
into a rocky basin of the creek two or three feet off, 
the waters of which are ahtiost shockingly cool. 
Where no heated waters flow from the rock, the 
steam issues under a high pressure, intensely hot, 
and shrieking or hissing. From one hole, a foot or 
two wide, at the base of the bank, it escapes with a 
noise like that of a high-pressure steamboat " blow- 
ing off;" and this vent is appropriately called the 
Steamboat Geyser. For a hundred rods here the 
rocks are hot under the feet, and as they are also 
slippery with moist mineral salts, and puffing from 
numerous small vents, the spectacle they present is 
in sharp contrast to the sylvan beauty of the creek. 
Yet grasses grow in these heated rocks, out of the 
very salts, and one or two thermal plants dare to 
blossom at the edge and in the very breath of the 
hottest springs, whose waters are sometimes greened 
with low forms of microscopic plant-life, which also 
slime the rock where they overflow. 

Following down the right bank of the Pluton for 



THE GEYSERS. 221 

a short distance, the trail turns to the right and en- 
ters a gorge densly embowered by shrubs at its 
mouth, but soon opening into the desolate regions 
of the Devil's Caiion. The nomenclature, like the 
scenery from this point, is all infernal, suggestive of 
Dante and his awful journey, except that the tourist 
hither seems to have reversed the course that Dante 
took, approaching Pluto's sphere from the region of 
Elysian beauty, instead of passing through that to 
these. Much of the nomenclature fastened to various 
points in the canon is arbitrary and impertinent 
enough, and one wishes it were possible to see the 
place dissociated from all names that suggest super- 
stition and cruelty. Climbing up a ledge that crosses 
the canon, we suddenly gain a view of the principal 
Geysers. The gorge for half a mile up the mount- 
ain lies before us, a steep ascent, filled with steam 
and noise, its bare sides painted many colors, its bed 
obstructed with boulders, around and under which 
turbid waters gurgle and smoke ; at the very head of 
all the apparent combustion and explosion an abrupt 



22 2 CALIFORNIAN PICTURES. 

and tall cliff of red rock, bearing a flag-staff. The 
ascent of this gorge is toilsome but exciting. 

Before the crusts of salt and sulphur and decom- 
posed rock had been disturbed, and a trail marked 
out where the footing was known to be solid, the 
ascent may have been dangerous. It is certainly not 
so now, although to many persons very unpleasant. 
The hot (ground under the feet ; the subterranean 
rumblings ; the throbs and thuds near some of the 
largest and most energetic steam vents ; the warm, 
moist atmosphere, filled with ascidulous vapors, often 
charged with sulphuretted hydrogen ; the screaming, 
roaring, hissing, gurgling, and bubbling of the va- 
rious springs, — all contribute to make the scene as 
repellant to some as it is grand and exciting to 
others. Where the vapors are thickest, and the noises 
loudest, the guide says, " This is the Devil's Labora- 
tory ; " and so his Satanic Majesty gets the credit all 
the way for some of the most curious and instructive 
of the inner workings of that kindly power whose 
most terrible forces are instruments of good — mani- 



THE GEYSERS. 223 

festations of laws that operate through all time and 
space with impartial grandeur, without vindictiveness 
or hate. 

There are no spouting fountains in the canon, but 
numerous bubbling springs, that sink and rise with 
spasmodic action. These number a hundred or two, 
and are of varying temperature and constituents. A 
few are quite cold, closely adjoining hot springs, 
while others have a temperature of 100'' to 207°. 
Some appear to be composed of alum and iron, others 
of sulphur and magnesia, while a few are strongly 
acidulous. Here the water is pale yellow, like that 
of ordinary white-sulphur springs ; there it is black 
as ink. The mingling of these different currents, 
with the aid of frequent steam injections, intensifies 
the chemical action, the sputter and fuming, that are 
incessantly going on. These phenomena are not con- 
fined to the narrow bed of the gorge, but extend for 
a hundred or two feet up its sides, which slope at a 
pretty steep angle. These slopes are soft masses of 
rock decomposed or slackened by chemical action, 



2 24 CALIFORNIAN PICTURES. 

and colored brilliantly with crystallized sulphur, and 
sulphates of iron, alum, lime, and magnesia, depos- 
ited from the springs and jets of steam, which are 
highly charged with them. As the rocks decompose 
and leach under the chemical action to which they 
are subjected, the soft silicious mass remaining, of a 
putty-like consistence, mixes with these salts. Some 
of the heaps thus formed assume conical shapes. 
They have an apparently firm crust, but are really 
treacherous stepping-places. One of the most remark- 
able steam vents in the canon is in the top of such a 
pile, fifty feet up the steep slope. It blows like the 
escape-pipe of a large engine. The beautiful masses 
of crystallized sulphur which form about it, as about 
the innumerable small fumaroles that occur along 
both banks, tempt one to dare to climb, and face the 
hot steam. The mass shakes beneath the tread, and 
is probably soft to a great depth. Wherever in these 
soft heaps a stick is thrust in, the escaping warm air 
soon deposits various salts. Of course a walk over 
such material is ruinous to boot and shoe leather, 



THE GEYSERS. 225 

while the splash of acid waters often injures the cloth- 
ino-. Everybody stops to gather specimens of the 
various salts and rocks. The guide presents to be 
tasted pure Epsom-salts (sulphate of magnesia), and 
salts of iron and alum, of soda and ammonia. Few 
care to taste the waters, however, which rival in their 
chemical and sanitary qualities all the springs of all 
the German spas together. Perhaps the most re- 
markable of the Geyser springs is that called, happily 
enouo-h, the Witches' Caldron. This is a black, cav- 
ernous opening in the solid rock, about seven feet 
across, and of unknown depth, filled with a thick 
inky liquid, boiling hot, that tumbles and roars under 
the pressure of -escaping steam, emitting a smell like 
that of bilge-water, and seems to proceed from some 
Plutonic reservoir. One irresistibly thinks of the 
hell-broth in " Macbeth," so " thick and slab," and 
repeats the words of the weird sisters : — 
"Double, double toil and trouble 
Fire burn and caldron bubble." 

A clever photographer, Mr. Muybridge, conceived 
15 



2 26 CALIFORNIAN PICTURES. 

the idea of grouping three lady visitors about this 
caldron, with hands linked, and alpenstocks held 
like magic wands, in which position he photo- 
graphed them amid the vaporous scene with telling 
effect. Another notable spot is the Devil's Grist- 
mill, where a large column of steam escapes from a 
hole in the rock with so much force that stones and 
sticks laid at the aperture are blown away like bits 
of paper. The internal noises at this vent truly re- 
semble the working of a grist-mill. Milton's hero is 
sponsor for another spring called the Devil's Ink- 
stand, notable for its black water, specimens of w^iich 
are taken ofif in small vials, and used at the hotel 
to inscribe the names of guests on the register. 
Dr. James Blake, who has read before the California 
Academy of Sciences several papers giving the re- 
sults of his observations on the Geysers, says that 
the water of the Devil's Inkstand contains nine per 
cent, of solid matter in the form of soluble salts and 
sediment, the former being in the proportion of 2.7 
per cent., the remaining ingredients being in the 



THE GEYSERS. 227 

form of a dark black sediment. The matter has a 
thoroughly acid reaction, which it owes to the pres- 
ence of free sulphuric acid. It would seem that a 
large portion of the soluble matter is composed of 
ammoniacal salts, probably the sulphate of ammonia. 
This salt, which rarely occurs in the natural state, 
has been found by Mr. Durand, another academi- 
cian, precipitated in large quantities from the vapor- 
ous exhalations at the Geysers. Dr. Blake's analy- 
sis of the water of the Devil's Inkstand shows that 
about f^fty per cent, of the saline ingredients con- 
sists of volatile salts, the remainder being salts of 
magnesia, lime, alumina, and iron. The presence of 
so laro-e a quantitv of ammoniacal salts in the water 
of a mineral spring is quite exceptional. These salts 
have long been recognized as occurring in the fuma- 
roles, in the neighborhood of volcanoes, and their 
origin, particularly in such large quantities as at 
these Geysers, opens up some very interesting ques- 
tions as to the nature of the strata from which so 
much nitroo-enous matter can be derived. The sed- 



228 CALIFORNIAN PICTURES. 

iment in the above water, in the proportion of more 
than an ounce to a quart, is probably some compound 
of iron and sulphur. Professor Whitney of the Geo- 
logical Survey accounts for the black color and vil- 
lainous smell of the water in the Witches' Caldron 
as follows : the iron held in solution comes in con- 
tact with water holding sulphuretted hydrogen, when 
an ink-black precipitate of iron takes place. 

Wherever one treads, going up the Devil's Canon, 
the step slips or crunches on some of the chemical 
products of these springs. It is a relief after a while 
to emerge from the heated vapors and sulphurous 
smells, and standing on the flag-staff cliff (called the 
Devil's Pulpit, of course), look down on the caiion 
and across to the hotel. Phenomena of the same 
sort, on a smaller scale, however, are visible on the 
higher slopes, and in the lesser gulches, up and 
down the creek. One place, called the Crater, a 
circular cavity of considerable depth, with a level, 
hollow-sounding floor, is evidently the site of ex- 
hausted thermal action, where the mineral constitu- 



THE GEYSERS. 229 

ents in the rock had all been slacked out, and the 
ground had sunk in; though about the lips of this 
'' crater " one or two vigorous steam vents are still 
in operation, and sulphur continues to be deposited 
in fine needle-crystals. Half a mile below Geyser 
Canon are a large sulphur heap, incrustations, and 
evidences of former activity, some heat still remain- 
ing in places. A ravine near by contains a clear 
hot spring, which was formerly built over with stones 
and sticks by the Indians, and the steam used as 
a sanitary agent. It is still known as the Indian 
Spring. Just without the rude wall inclosing it, runs 
a cold spring of excellent drinking water. Four miles 
up the Pluton Creek occur what are called the " Lit- 
tle Geysers," similar in character to the larger ones, 
except that they issue from a gently sloping hill-side 
instead of a deep gorge. The rocks and the chemical 
action are the same. 

As to the origin of the phenomena we have been 
describing, it may be said that there are two theories, 
volcanic and chemical. Professor Whitney says (in 



230 CALIFORNIAN PICTURES. 

his " Report of Progress," vol. i. p. 95) that there will 
be no difficulty in understanding them when we con- 
sider that they are displayed along a line of former 
volcanic activity, and where even now the igneous 
forces are not entirely dormant. " The dependence 
of the Geysers for their activity, in part, on the re- 
currence of the rainy season, indicates clearly that 
the water, percolating down through the fissures in 
the rocks, meets with a mass of subterranean lava 
not yet entirely cooled off, and, becoming intensely 
heated, under pressure finds its way to the surface 
along a line of fissure connecting with the bottom 
of Geyser Cafion ; in this heated condition it has a 
powerful action on the rocks and the metallic sulphu- 
rets which they contain, especially on the sulphuret 
of iron everywhere so abundantly diffused through 
the formation, and so dissolves them and brings them 
up to the surface, to be again partly redeposited as 
the solution is cooled down by contact with the air." 
Professor Whitney adds that phenomena of the same 
kind as those observed at the Geysers, and sometimes 



THE GEYSERS. 23 I 

even on a larger scale, are exhibited all through the 
now almost extinct volcanic regions of California and 
Nevada. Even on Mount Shasta the last expiring 
efforts of this once mighty volcano may be traced 
in the solfatara action still going on near the sum- 
mit, and which is undoubtedly due to the melting 
snow finding its way down to the heated lava, or 
other volcanic niaterials below, in the interior of what 
was once the crater, from and around which a mass 
of erupted matter has been poured forth and piled 
up to the height of several thousand feet. We know, 
on other authority, that earthquakes have frequently 
been experienced at the Geysers, accompanied by loud 
noise. Two smart shocks on the night of February 
20, 1863, were followed by the bursting forth of new 
openings of steam and boiling waters. Such an out- 
burst, on one occasion, caused a gush of steam up 
the left side of the caiion so hot as to kill all the 
trees and shrubs in its course. 

The chemical theory asserts that all the phenom- 
ena are ascribable to the action of water percolating 



232 CALIFORNIAN PICTURES. 

through mineral deposits, and creating heat, expan- 
sion, and explosion by simple chemical decomposi- 
tion, without the aid of a heated volcanic mass. The 
two theories may be harmonized, for the mineral mat- 
ter is probably of volcanic origin, and whether it is 
heated before the water acts upon it is not very 
material. 

In spite of the hot water, the steam and the sa- 
line deposits, vegetation flourishes far down the slopes 
of Geyser Canon, about the margins, and in some 
of the very waters. The evergreen oak thrives al- 
most within reach of the exhalations, and maples and 
alders are found on the banks of the creek close to 
some of the steam vents. A grass called Panicum 
thermale grows near the hot springs. Animal life 
dares to invade the scene, for dragon-flies of great 
beauty may often be observed, while birds build their 
nests and sing in the adjacent trees. Dr. Blake found 
two forms of plant-life in a spring having a temper- 
ature as high as 198°. These were delicate micro- 
scopic confervie. In a spring having a temperature 



THE GEYSERS. 233 

of I74^ many oscillariae were found, which by the 
interlacement of their dehcate fibres formed a semi- 
gelatinous mass. In a spring of a temperature of 
134°, layers of filamentous green and red algae were 
freely formed as the water flowed over the rocks. 
Unusual masses of oscillariae flourish in the waters 
of Pluton Creek. Their presence in the highly min- 
eralized waters of a spring with a temperature of 1 74° 
shows how great is the range of the conditions in 
which these forms of plant-life can be developed. 

One returns to the hotel after a morning tramp 
through Geyser Canon and along Pluton Creek with 
an enormous appetite, and is glad to rest for a few 
hours. Afterward, there are delightful strolls up and 
down the creek, and good trout-fishing for those who 
will 0-0 far enough. Deer and grizzly bear are to be 
had for the hunting in the mountains, — the grizzly 
sometimes without hunting. But the sportsman had 
better be accompanied by some one familiar with the 
country, unless he is a good forester, and can find his 
way without a path. A San Francisco lawyer was 



2 34 CALIFORNIAN PICTURES. 

lost for several days on a hunting trip, and nearly 
starved to death before he was found. It was a rov- 
ing: hunter, of the true Leatherstockino- sort, named 
Elliot, who first, of white men, found the Geysers 
in 1847. Coming suddenly to the edge of the canon, 
he was amazed at what he beheld, and on returnino;; 
to his companions told them, in his rough way, he 
had found the mouth of the infernal regions. Elliot 
fell in a fight with a tribe of Nevada Indians, not 
many years ago, a true border-hero to the last. 
The mountain over which he probably approached 
the Geysers, called Cobb's Peak, commands one of 
the grandest views obtainable in California. North- 
ward, only fifteen miles off, lies Clear Lake, divided 
in two parts by the purple bulk of Uncle Sam 
Mountain, and surrounded by the rugged spurs of 
the Coast Range. On a clear day, one can see in 
that direction two hundred miles in an air-line, 
where the snowy crown of Mount Shasta, fourteen 
thousand four hundred and forty feet above the sea, 
floats in the sky like a fixed cloud. 



THE GEYSERS. 235 

Mount St. Helena and Napa Valley lie nearer at 
hand, and to the westward the eye takes in the 
Pacific Ocean for a hundred miles along the coast. 
Cobb's Peak can be ascended on horseback. The 
timber is not thick on the way, and many charming 
outlooks are obtained. Another scenical treat may 
be had by returning to San Francisco by way of the 
old road across the Hog's Back, to Ray's Station, 
and thence into Russian River and Sonoma Valley. 
Reaching San Francisco by this route the tourist 
will have gained a very good idea of the northern 
coast valleys of California, and the noble bay into 
which they partly drain. 



GOLDEN GATE PARK. 



Beyond the town, the bushy mounds between, 
Roll drifts of yellow wrinkled sand — 

Uncrested waves, that dash against the green 
Like ocean billows 'gainst the strand ; 

But when the spring is soft, and winds are low, 

The shifting masses lie as still 
As frozen banks of crusted moonlit snow 

That hide the hollow in the hill. 

One way a mountain lifts its verdant crest 

Along a blue and cloudless sky ; 
On sloping pastures cattle feed or rest, 

And swallows twitter as they fly. 



GOLDEN GATE PARK. 237 

Below, around, the lusty lupin blooms 

In purple color, honey sweet ; 
The poppy's deep and golden cup illumes 

Each plat of grass or chance-sown wheat. 

On rounded hillocks lustrous leafage shoots 

From laurel and from thorny oak, 
And sprawling vinelets clutch with thirsty roots 

The soil no rain can ever soak. 

A deep-set lakelet, greenly ringed about, 

Gems with its blue an open space, 
Where yellow buttercups their beauty flout, 

And insects flutter o'er its face. 

Through scenes like this the red and winding way 

Gives glimpses of the gusty town, 
Throned on its many hills along the bay, 

Where far Diablo looketh down. 

But westward, over sand-dunes ribbed and hoar. 

That deepen heaven's azure hue, 
Are lines of snowy surf that faintly roar, 

Edging a sea that melts in blue — 



238 CALIFORNIAN PICTURES. 

A summer-shining sea, that slides and slips 

In silent currents through the Gate, 
Where glinting sails of slowly moving ships 

For pilot or for breezes wait. 

Northward, beyond a ridge of yellow sand, 

That hides the narrow harbor-way, 
Rise headlands brown and bluff, whose summits grand 

Are islanded in vapors gray. 

Below a line of arrow-headed firs, 

That stretches 'neath a strip of cloud, 

The slope is softly greened, and nothing stirs 
But shadow of the misty shroud. 

Peace broods where winds are fiercely wont to rave, 

To drive the sand like sleet before ; 
No sound disturbs the vernal stillness, save 

The surf upon the distant shore — 

The faintly sighing surf, or linnet's song, 

Or music of the friendly voice. 
Which gives to nature as we go along 

A charm that makes the day more choice. 



CITY SCENERY. 



The traveler who approaches San Francisco for 
the first time from the sea will not be charmed by 
its appearance, unless he has been fitted by a voyage 
of many months, like those early ones around Cape 
Horn, to welcome the sight of any land or town as 
beautiful. There is some beauty of form in the 
deeply eroded sandstone hills along the ocean where 
the surf dashes and roars constantly, and some rich- 
ness in their tints of brown rock and yellow stubble 
under a summer sun and clear sky. There, as the 
ship enters a narrow strait leading to the bay, bold 
rocky cliffs on one side, a tall mountain on the other, 
the water covered with wild fowl, and the bay shores 
and islands coming into view ahead, the scene is 



240 CALIFORNIAN PICTURES. 

picturesque and animated enough. But after leaving 
the rugged headlands that form the Golden Gate, 
and rounding a bold, russet-colored promontor}^ the 
gaze does not rest so much on these things as on 
the treeless sandy ridge, the formed lines of street 
cuttings which go straight over or through varying 
elevations, the mean architecture, the cold, monoto- 
nous gray of land and houses, marking the northwest- 
erly extremity of the city. The long, gaunt peninsula, 
ribbed with outcropping strata of serpentine or sand- 
stone, with long wave-like sand-dunes and rows of 
square wooden houses, remind one strangely of some 
monster skeleton of an early geological epoch, fossil- 
ized, and partly uncovered to the cold sea winds. 
It is only as another turn reveals the east front 
of the city, crowded with the shipping of all the 
world, covering more hills than Rome can boast, and 
flanked in the distance by greater elevations, that the 
metropolis of the Pacific presents a really attractive 
aspect. Situated on the extremity of a narrow pen- 
insula, which divides the ocean from the bay, and 



CITY SCENERY. 24 1 

built mainly on the inner slopes of ridges rising one 
above another from the water's edge to a height of 
from two hundred and fifty to four hundred feet, San 
Francisco has a bold and striking appearance. The 
silvery vapors lying like clouds in the distant inter- 
vales or mountain sags, the blended smokes of the 
city transformed by the sun into a softening haze, 
increases a grandeur of effect which is primarily due 
to elevation. While the local colors are brown and 
sere, except when the season of rain modifies them 
with verdure, vapor and smoke enforce a general tint 
of pearly gray, shading off into lilac on the higher and 
farther mountains, and harmonizing with the color 
of the bay, which only when calm reflects the pure 
blue of heaven. Though mist and smoke are men- 
tioned, and either alone or together are seldom quite 
lacking, the upper atmosphere is usually sunny, giv- 
ing a sparkle to the dancing water and a charm to 
the land. 

The hamlet of Yerba Buena,^ from which has de- 

^ Named from a sweet smelling indigenous plant. 
16 



242 CALIFORNIAN PICTURES. 

veloped in a quarter of a century the present city, 
occupied a gentle declivity between the hills and a 
crescent line of beach whose horns were bluff prom- 
ontories. But the pretty cove known to old whalers 
and pioneer gold-hunters has been filled in to a line 
drawn straight from point to point, forming several 
hundred acres of level land, which is now thickly 
built over and constitutes the commercial heart of the 
city. Clark's Point and Telegraph Hill, the northerly 
promontory of the old cove, have been cut away un- 
til they present a sheer precipice of brown siliceous 
sandstone, nearly two hundred feet high, on the dizzy 
verge of which rows of houses stand in bold relief 
against the sky. On the farther side this declivity 
slopes down to sand-hills and dunes that stretch along 
the bay-entrance for several miles and lapse at last 
into the sea-beach on the western side of the penin- 
sula. Rincon Hill, the southerly point of the cove, 
was a less elevated bluff, covered with beautiful shrub 
oaks, laurel, and ceanothus ; but this has been built 
over, partly cut down facing the lower bay, and quite 



CITY SCENERY. 243 

cut tl-irough by a leading street which makes an ex- 
cavation seventy-five feet deep with a talus of garden 
mould, trees and plants, the debris of ruined home- 
steads, and a crest of dilapidated houses toppling to 
their fall in a desolate way. The hills west of the 
cove, where they have not been quite leveled, filling 
up ravines and hollows, have been cut through by an 
arbitrarily rectangular street system, which may be 
taken as a good type of the invincible but tasteless 
energy of the pioneer builders, who would rather go 
rudely over a difficulty than gracefully around it. 
The resultant inconveniences of steep ascents for man 
and beast, of dwellings left perched high in air, of 
repeated expense to modify early blunders are partly 
compensated by the fact that many of the streets have 
the most picturesque vistas. Looking various ways 
one sees in the perspective villa-crowned cliffs, the 
craggy peaks or rounded contour of the peninsular 
hills, the straight blue ridge of San Bruno to the 
southward, the Golden Gateway cloven through beet- 
ling precipices, the dromedary-backed islands of the 



244 CALIFORNIAN PICTURES. 

bay, or the rumpled folds of the Alameda mountains 
rising beyond the east side of the bay to a height of 
from fifteen hundred to two thousand feet, treeless 
except for the luxuriant groves of oak and laurel hid 
in their deep ravines, and lorded over by the lofty 
peaks of the Mount Diablo range lying beyond. The 
streets leading east and west give the passenger vis- 
ions of the morning or evening sun, rising or setting 
in glory over landscapes that seem almost a part of 
the city. In most great cities nature is shut out by 
the walls of brick and mortar ; but in San Francisco 
she always asserts her presence, if not her influence. 
The chief money mart, California Street, abuts upon 
a lovely picture of water and mountain and sky, at 
one end ; while at the other end, down the steep 
flank of a high hill, the setting sun shoots his golden 
arrows and trails a robe of crimson cloud, glorifying 
the street even to the common gaze amid all its 
common houses. 

Climbing to the top of this delectable hill, and of 
Russian Hill near by, some three or four hundred 



CITY SCENERY. 245 

feet above the tide, we take in the whole topography 
and scenery of this fortunate cit}^ The peninsula, 
twenty-four miles in length, and at its northerly end 
only about four miles wide, is made up of high 
sandstone and serpentine hills, both ridged and tu- 
mular in form, alternating with sandy knolls or long 
stretches of shifting dunes, and sometimes separated 
by grassy valleys, shrubby ravines and elevated pla- 
teaus. On one side is the blue Pacific, breaking: in 
foam upon a long sandy beach ; on another the bay, 
laving the city front and following the many inden- 
tations of the inner shore-lines beyond. If we look 
northwestwardly, we see the steep bluffs and rocky 
headlands six or seven hundred feet high, a deep red- 
dish brown in color, with green slopes above that 
terminate in the sharp but handsome peak of Tamal- 
pais. This mountain, about two thousand six hun- 
dred feet high, is only a few miles from the city, and 
rising so abruptly from the bay level is a prominent 
landmark in every direction for long distances. It is 
the terminus of a peculiar straight ridge which as- 



246 CALIFORNIAN PICTURES. 

cends gradually from the ocean side like an inclined 
plain, forming one of the ranges of Marin. Thickets 
of chaparral give it a dark color, according to the 
amount of humidity or sunshine in the air and the 
strike of the sun's rays. Under these shifting influ- 
ences its tints are infinite. In a perfectly clear at- 
mosphere, its local color comes out strongly, and it 
seems not one fourth as far away as usual. A very 
slight haze clothes it in a tender violet and sets it 
farther off. If mists are rolling in from the sea, they 
circle about its top, and lie in its hollows like fleecy 
clouds. A person who stands on its summit at such 
a time sees below him nothing but a billowy ocean 
of silver vapor, and enjoys in safety the spectacle 
that aeronauts attain only by perilous flights. If the 
mists are absent, the gorges on the northerly side are 
seen to be filled with noble groves of the redwood, 
fir, laurel, madrona, and other trees characteristic of 
the Coast Range ; and there will be, far down, inter- 
vales of yellow stubble, relieved by clumps of dark 
green live-oaks and blooming masses of buckeye and 



1 UIHIj I fSsS-^-^tV 



m' 
1 '.1 1 





CITY SCENERY. 247 

ceanothus. The eye also takes in a fine panorama of 
ocean and bay ; of the gray hilly city, and its envi- 
ronments of richly colored mountains ; of the valleys 
opening to the northward and the Sierra Nevada in 
the east. But the sunset aspects of Tamalpais, from 
the town, are its peculiar glory. These are so rich 
and yet so tender, like the verse of Tennyson, that 
they defy description. A very dying dolphin of 
mountains is Tamalpais. No wonder that it is the 
love of local poets and painters, and that enthusiasts 
like Stoddard and Keith have made it a very mount 
of inspiration. 

Looking northward, from one high point within 
the city, we see the islands of the bay. Alcatraz, a 
great brown turtle with red brick forts upon its back, 
bristling with cannon from all its steep shore-batter- 
ies, which have displaced the beautiful pelicans that 
gave the island its name. Angel Island, whose cone- 
like top is nearly eight hundred feet above the tide, a 
giant mound of grass and flowers in the wet months, 
of brown stubble in the drv ; Goat Island, a dark 



248 CALIFORNIAN PICTURES. 

olive green with its chaparral crown ; and smaller 
islands farther off, where the upper bay pushes its 
narrower channels between low, mound-like hills cov- 
ered with wild oats, to meet the yellow discharge of 
the river that winds lazily through the broad prai- 
ries of the interior. In this direction the vista ends 
with the high ranges of Sonoma and Napa, and 
Mount St. Helena, sixty miles off, lifts its peak of 
slaty gray over four thousand feet. Looking east- 
wardly, across the bay, which is here about five miles 
wide, we see at the base of the Contra Costa range 
the Alameda Valley, well deserving its soft Spanish 
name, for its gentle slopes are partly covered with 
dense groves of the California live-oak {Quercus ag- 
rifolid), quite uniform in the rounded masses of their 
foliage and their stout gray trunks, though curi- 
ously varied in botanical character, often loaded with 
bunches of mistletoe, and planted with an orchard- 
like regularity, opening on vistas of water, meadow, 
and hill. Here the milder climate permits a luxuri- 
ance of native flora which is in marked contrast to 



CITY SCENERY. 249 

the rather Umited growths of the sandy and windy 
peninsula, where, within the city hmits, the sheltered 
spots that were once verdant enough, have been 
mostly buried by the leveling process and covered 
with buildings. On this favored slope a couple of 
miles wide and ten or twelve long, half a dozen oak- 
embowered towns nearly join their suburbs and dot 
the lesser heights behind them with pretty villas. 
Chief of these are Oakland and Alameda, which are 
nearly conterminus for six or seven miles, ending 
northerly in the charming vicinity of Berkeley, where 
the State University is growing with noble promise 
amid groves of oak and bay and laurel, by the mar- 
sin of a bubblinor brook, — a scene destined to be as 
classical in letters as it is already lovely by nature. 
The Alameda shore commands a grand view of the 
bay, the city, the islands, the Golden Gate and its sen- 
tinel Tamalpais, and even of the ocean beyond. The 
Contra Costa or Alameda mountains rise abruptly 
above it to an average height of fifteen hundred feet, 
deeply eroded from summit to base, treeless, except 



250 CALIFORNIAN PICTURES. 

for the beautiful groves smuggled In the winding 
gorges and passes, which are not visible from the 
city. At intervals of a few years, a light snowfall 
robes them for half a day in winter — a spectacle of 
wonder in this mild re2:ion where the word winter 
calls up no ideas but those of needed showers, of 
verdure, and of bloom. Behind the Alameda hills 
rises the double cone of Monte Diablo, very near to 
the view, but separated from the hills named by the 
San Ramon Valley, and distant from the city easterly 
about thirty miles. This peak is three thousand eight 
hundred and fifty-six feet high. Rising from the cen- 
tre of a wide basin which runs into the great valley 
of the Sacramento and San Joaquin, and being the 
most elevated spot in this region, Monte Diablo looms 
up in the perspective of every view in all directions 
around it, and is one of the most familiar landmarks 
to the citizen of San Francisco, who sees it daily and 
almost hourly. Its dark blue mass lords it nobly over 
the brown hills of Alameda, and when it takes on 
its snowy cap for a few days in the rainy season it 



CITY SCENERy. 25 I 

is more peculiarly prominent. It is a great sun-dial, 
for the stages of the coming or going day are marked 
in bands of shifting color upon its top. Around its 
base, fertile valleys swell to meet its foot-hills as if 
they would embrace it, and hold a score of thrifty 
towns. From its summit one of the most extensive 
and beautiful views in the Union can be obtained. 
The great plains of the Sacramento and San Joa- 
quin, stretching from the northeast to southwest 
nearly three hundred and fifty miles ; the rivers of 
the same names winding their yellow currents from 
north and south, meeting at the head of the upper 
bay ; the vast bulk of the Sierra Nevada with its 
snowy crest, along the eastern sky, from Lassen's 
Peak at one extremity to Mount Whitney at another ; 
the isolated " Buttes " of Marysville in the centre of 
the Sacramento Valley ; the line of the Coast Range 
from Mount St. Helena on the north, to Mount Ham- 
ilton, four thousand four hundred feet high, at the 
south, broken into lesser spurs around the bay ; the 
whole scenery of the bay itself, the city, the Golden 



252 CALIFORNIAN PICTURES. 

Gate, the ocean beyond, — all this magnificent pan- 
orama, in clear weather, lies spread out before the 
spectator on the summit of Diablo. The area in- 
cluded within the bounds of this view is probably 
not less, according to Professor Whitney, than forty 
thousand square miles ; adding what can be seen of 
the ocean it is much more. It might well have been 
on such a commanding height as this that the enemy 
of mankind tempted the Saviour ; and an early Span- 
ish legend, to which the mountain owes its name, act- 
ually located here a terrifying appearance of the devil 
to a party of explorers. This legend would seem to 
indicate a belief that the mountain is of volcanic 
origin, as it has been said to be by some writers ; 
but it is simply a grand mass of metamorphic sand- 
stone, flanked by jasper, shales, and slates, with lim- 
ited coal-beds at its base and deposits of cretaceous 
fossils. The gap between the two peaks is eight hun- 
dred feet deep, and the north peak is nearly three 
hundred feet lower than its companion. From cer- 
tain points of view the two peaks are brought into 



CITY SCENERY. 253 

line and have the effect of a single perfect cone. 
Seen from the upper bay or river, the mountain 
seems to rise in this shape directly from the water's 
edge, and is very imposing in its near bulk. The 
ascent of it from any quarter, with the ever expand- 
ing outlooks revealed, is full of picturesque charm. 
The nearer scenery of the foot-hills and lower flanks 
— embracino; araceful wavelets of harvest-land, melt- 
ing into level spaces, deep gorges filled with ever- 
green orrowths, sandstone cliffs weathered into fantas- 
tic forms, and bits of charming brooks and grassy 
springs — is itself a treat to the lover of nature. 
Sunrise and sunset are the best hours for visiting 
the summit. At the former, the air is clearest, and 
one gets the widest view, besides the glorious spec- 
tacle of the great round orb flashing up above the 
crest of the Sierra, bringing its highest peaks of snow 
into sharp relief. The shadow of the peak is thrown 
in a pyramidal form over the whole country to the 
west, across the Alameda hills, the bay and peninsula 
of San Francisco, and into the ocean beyond, forty 



254 CALIFORNIAN PICTURES. 

miles in length, — a dark bluish triangle of shade that 
shortens slowly as the sun rises higher and higher, 
that withdraws by almost imperceptible degrees from 
the ocean, from the peninsula and bay, from the Ala- 
meda range and San Ramon Valley, up the flanks 
of Diablo himself, and there at last quite disappears. 
At evening this spectre of the peak is reversed, fall- 
ing over the San Joaquin Valley, up the Sierra, and 
even into the sky, at first gradually lengthening as 
the sun sinks lower in the west, and then losing it- 
self in the general twilight and darkness of his dis- 
appearance. Looking seaward then, we observe the 
myriad lights of the city, if no fog obscures them, 
and on the distant Farallone Islands the flashing of 
the beacon set to warn mariners. 

Returning again to our hill in the city, one over- 
looks the undulations of the metropolis all around 
him, and has a vivid sense of the abounding energ}^, 
increased by the stimulus of a dry and equable cli- 
mate, which created the place from nothing. Over 
the populous levels to the west and south, which lie 



CITY SCENERY. 255 

like gulfs between California Street Hill and the Mis- 
sion Hills, hang vapors and smokes that the evening 
sun transforms into beautifying haze, like those gauzy 
veils that women wear to enhance their charms. The 
Mission Hills bound a plain where stands Dolores 
and still rings its centuried bell, in the heart of the 
busy community which has succeeded its primitive 
congregation of simple savages. These hills, eight or 
ten hundred feet high, dividing two extremities of the 
city, are brown and barren enough near at hand, 
though always graceful with their cap-like peaks, 
and richly dight with buttercups and poppies in the 
spring, or with purple at all seasons when the set- 
ting sun makes them aflame. Farther in the same 
direction the high walls of the San Bruno Mountains 
are drawn in darker purple along the sky, the bris- 
tling fir trees scattered on their summits, distinctly 
visible, calling to the citizen's mind memories of the 
solemn, sonorous woods that look upon the sea. 
From the base of these mountains, which mark the 
breaking down of the Santa Cruz Range, stretches 



256 CALIFORNIAN PICTURES. 

around the southerly end of the bay a margin of fat 
valleys, rich in grain and fruit, embracing those of 
San Jose, Santa Clara, and curving eastwardly again 
to Alameda. As the sun descends, the bay begins 
to reflect the tints of the sky. Shadows fall into the 
hollows of the city, and crawl up the slopes of the 
Alameda hills, beyond which the top of Diablo is 
ruddy with the last glow of day. 

But before day closes let us descend to an inter- 
vale lying farther west, and thence climb the ridge 
which is crowned by the monumental peak of Lone 
Mountain, around whose slopes, looking both towards 
the city and the sea, all the worry and passion and 
pride of the hard metropolis sink at last into the 
grave. The noisy town on one side, and the still 
blue Pacific on the other, of these thousands who 
have gone before, are apt emblems of the lives they 
led, and the peace they have found. The city thins 
into scattered hamlets, that are lost in drifting sand ; 
and beyond one sees the ocean, hears the faint roar 
of its surf, and, when the air is clear enough, catches 



CITY SCENERY. 257 

glimpses of the Farallon Islands, thirty miles away, 
where the imagination pictures the sharp gray cliffs 
populous with seals, gulls, and murres. Among the 
sand, on every hand are hillocks of green shrubber}^ 
with intervales of grass, hollows filled with ceanothus 
thickets and groves of stunted live-oak, and even a 
lakelet or two, where a great park is in progress of 
creation. The mists that often roll in over the sea- 
ward slope maintain an olive-tinted verdure throuoh 
the long rainless summer; but the landscape, except 
on the sunniest days, when litde or no wind blows, 
is sombre and melancholy. After the rains begin, in 
October or November, and thence until May or June, 
extensive thickets of lupin and ceanothus, encroach- 
ing on the drifting sands, take on a brighter green 
and burst into profuse bloom, blending their tints of 
lemon and purple and blue, and scenting the air with 
honeyed sweets for miles. Orange-colored poppies 
contest the open spaces with shining buttercups ; the 
grassy slopes of the San Miguel Mountains are dotted 
17 



258 CALIFORNIAN PICTURES. 

with cattle ; the far ocean is blue and sunny, creep- 
ing slowly upon the beach of white sand. 

At this season, also, the more distant landscape 
southward, and on the eastern side of the bay, as 
well as north of the Golden Gate, takes on a li^ht 
pea-green, to which the vaporous air rising from the 
water gives a soft gray tint as seen from the city. 
No color can be imagined more delicate through the 
day, or more lovely in its softening tint of violet at 
evening. And a constant phenomenon of sunset is 
the flush of pale pink far up the eastern sky. When 
night settles down, the view of the city from the 
hill-tops, illuminated by long processions of gas-lights 
paling the wan stars above, is singularly impressive. 
Looked at from the bay side, approaching on the 
water, the night aspect of the city is still more 
striking ; for details are lost, and only the thick 
lights as they climb the hills are seen as so many 
ruddy stars against a dark background, — those on 
the wharves and shipping casting long, tremulous re- 
flections in front. 



CITY SCENERY. 259 

How fortunate is San Francisco in these pict- 
uresque surroundings and effects ! How fortunate 
again in the high points within her Hmits and sub- 
urbs, which command one panoramic view from ocean 
to mountain, around the shores of the peninsula and 
the bay. Scenically, there is no other American city 
so happy. And then the cHmate of summer and 
spring, whose means of temperature vary only ten 
or twelve degrees, the seasonable succession of dry 
and wet, of russet and green, the alternations of clear 
and misty air, are circumstances which give a pe- 
culiar variety to the scenic effects. The city land- 
scapes have their moods, as though they were human. 
When the atmosphere is transparent and still, the 
town glows with a mild heat ; the bay is like blue 
satin with shadings of pink ; the mountains on every 
side are wonderfully bold and near, revealing every 
detail of their sculpture as well as the strength of 
their local color; the sand-dunes lie still against the 
bluest sky ; and the ocean wears an expression ex- 
quisitely dreamy and gracious. Sparkle and motion. 



26o CALIFORNIAN PICTURES. 

without loss of clearness, succeed the languor of such 
a day when a light wind blows, ruffling the bay, and 
giving a louder tone to the surf. Shining masses of 
vapor may roll inland, but they are cumulus, not 
sheeted, and rest peacefully in the bosom of the hills, 
where the sun makes of them a splendor. But when 
a true fog comes, it envelops everything in its gloom ; 
chills the soul and body ; gives a cold gray look to 
the city, and makes a dolorous way of the Golden 
Gate, where it pours in as if it were a troop of sad 
spirits. Such contrasts are full of poetic suggestions, 
and unite to make a character for our city scenery, 
changeful yet not capricious, full of charm and con- 
pensation. 



THE FAWN ON 'CHANGE. 

(CALIFORNIA STREET, SAN FRANCISCO.) 



It Stood amid an eager crowd 
Of brokers on " the street " — 

A mild-eyed fawn, led by a thong 
That checked its impulse fleet. 

Its pretty hairy sides were brown. 
Its ears were large and soft, 

And lightly moved its little hoofs 
As though they trod a croft. 

A cruel hunter killed its dam' 
While browsing in a glade 

Of redwood hills, and saved the fawn 
For profit in a trade. 



262 CALIFORNIAN PICTURES. 

And so it came to Mammon's court, 
Where fearlessly it stood 

As though beside its dam again 
Within its native wood. 

How many features hard and stern 
Relaxed before its grace ! 

How many hands were gently laid 
Upon its pretty face ! 

Like guileless babyhood it touched 

Those avaricious men, 
Who stopped to meet its lovely eyes. 

And turned to look again. 

The hidden springs of feeling, choked 

By sordidness so long, 
Welled up within them as they gazed, 

And bubbled into song — 

A quiet song, that filled the soul 

With memories of days 
When eyes as soft, of girls as pure, 

Beamed on them love and praise ; 



THE FAWN ON 'CHANGE. 263 

With memories of days afield, 

When nature, for the boy, 
Had still a charm that made him thrill 

With health-bestowing joy. 

And as they pass along they see, 

Far down the avenue 
Of busy trade, a purple line 

Of hills against the blue. 

Where bay and oak the gorges fill, 

And velvet shadows lie, 
And birds uprising from the wave 

In lazy circles fly. 

They smell the wild rose in the street, 

And far beyond the town 
They seem to wander, where the lark 

His melody pours down. 



SANTA CRUZ MOUNTAINS. 



Everywhere in California the Spaniards or Span- 
ish-speaking Mexicans left the soft nomenclature of 
the most musical language of Europe. They saw 
much here to remind them both of Spain and Mex- 
ico, — in the lofty Sierras capped with snow, in the 
broad valleys, in the rich contrasts of russet and green 
tints under a cloudless sky. Hence it was natural to 
transfer to the new land many of the names familiar 
in the old. The religious sentiment of the Mission 
Fathers and their followers led them to add names 
of sacred meaning, equally musical. From these two 
causes it results that California rejoices in a nomen- 
clature which both recalls visions of Old Spain and 
revives the religious traditions of the Middle Ages, 



SANTA CRUZ MOUNTAINS. 265 

The names of the mission estabUshments were ex- 
tended to the adjacent country, to valley, mountain, 
or stream, as in the case of San Buenaventura, Santa 
Barbara, and many other charming localities of mel- 
lifluous title. In this way the name of Santa Cruz 
was extended from the Mission of the Holy Cross, 
founded in 1791, to the noble mountains that rise 
behind it, overlooking the ocean. The Santa Cruz 
Mountains are simply a conspicuous spur of the 
Coast Range, beginning a few miles south of San 
Francisco, and extending fifty or sixty miles parallel 
with the trend of the coast. On the east side of this 
spur lie the extensive valleys of San Jose and Santa 
Clara, which skirt the lower end of San Francisco 
Bay, and are bounded by the Alameda ridges of the 
Coast Range farther inland. Between the Santa Cruz 
Mountains and the Pacific there is only a narrow 
strip of terraced soil, marking the recession of the 
ocean at different periods as the land was elevated, 
and leaving fertile plateaus where anciently rolled 
wave and tide. 



266 CALIFORNIAN PICTURES. 

These mountains have a base about twenty-five 
miles wide, and an elevation of from two thousand to 
nearly four thousand feet, including several character- 
istic peaks. As they consist chiefly of sandstone, 
they have been eroded during tens of centuries, by 
the copious winter rains of this climate, into most 
picturesque forms. Their slopes are channeled with 
deep ravines, their crests cut through by numerous 
passes, dividing conical or tabular summits, and their 
bases, spread out in tumuli-like foot-hills, gradually 
sink into level benches or valleys. At one place near 
Santa Cruz the sandstone of the lower slopes has 
weathered into forms curiously resembling columnar 
ruins and castellated piles. Along the ocean it is 
cut into cliffs and walls that loom gray and resplen- 
dent, and against which the surf dashes and roars 
without rest ; though the harvest may be yellow to 
the very edge above, where bloom purple flowers fed 
on the spray. But the glory of the mountains is 
their magnificent forest of redwood, which clothes all 
their upper flanks in perennial verdure, and grows 



SANTA CRUZ MOUNTAINS. 267 

lustily in the congenial sandstone soil and sea fogs, 
without which these trees do not flourish, if indeed 
they can exist. Pines, firs, and oaks there are also, 
but these we have seen elsewhere, while the redwood 
has its habitat only in portions of the Coast Range. 
Leaving the sandy and treeless peninsula of San Fran- 
cisco, skirting the marshy shores of the lower bay, and 
crossing the fertile valley of San Jose, whose level 
surface of harvest, orchard, and vineyard stretches to 
bare, brown hills, which are relieved only in the south- 
west by blue mountains, it is a fine contrast to dash 
up the umbrageous flanks of the Santa Cruz, through 
clouds of red dust it may be, but also through such 
forests as one sees nowhere out of California. 

There are two ways of going over the range from 
the inner valleys, and each has its special features. 
Turning to the westward from the pretty oak-nest- 
ling town of San Mateo, which lies in a narrow vale 
crowded between the bay and the Sierra Morena 
branch of the Santa Cruz Range, the stage leads 
up the San Mateo Creek, — a little trout-stream em- 



268 CALIFORNIAN PICTURES. 

bowered with chestnut oaks, with densely-leaved and 
aromatic bay trees, with tall, straight alders rooted in 
the very water, and with many flowering shrubs, its 
lower banks curtained by hanging vines or edged with 
mosses and tufted grass. What an exquisite shelter- 
ing from the summer glare outside, which burns down 
on rolling hills yellow with grain or stubble, where 
only rare clumps of shrub oak or buckeye relieve 
the sight with patches of grateful shade, or the ma- 
droiia shows its smooth, ruddy bark and lustrous 
waxen leaves, dwarfing the not dissimilar manzanita. 
Leaving the creek, and going steadily upward, the 
road curves among lofty rounded hills, that wave 
their green or yellow harvests in rippling lines along 
the sky edge on either side, producing a most curious 
effect of color and motion. Nothing can be softer 
than the myriad wavelets of light and shade, while 
the breeze-tossed grain rolls ceaselessly against the 
blue heaven far above the eye. And so we reach a 
narrow summit some two thousand feet above the 
valley and the bay, and have a rich prospect as we 



SANTA CRUZ MOUNTAINS. 269 

gaze down upon them and beyond to the treeless 
ridges of the Mount Diablo range. Immediately 
descending again, we enter a long and narrow pass, 
cut deep in the western slope, which leads almost 
straight to the Pacific, opening a free view of the 
blue ocean and its white crescent lines of surf beat- 
ing upon the green beach of Half Moon Bay. This 
gorge is comparatively treeless ; but its lower slopes 
are cultivated, and along the black, loamy banks of 
its little stream are patches of the yellow primrose 
and sweet-brier, of spotted tulips, golden poppies, and 
purple lupins. The moist sea air keeps the grass 
always green, and we seem to have suddenly reached 
another climate than that of the warm and dry in- 
terior, with its prevalent summer colors of russet and 
chrome. A most exhilarating dash, with the ocean 
always in view ahead, brings us to the shore, where 
we turn southward through uneven benches cultivated 
to vegetables and grain, hugging the rugged hills on 
one side, and gazing with unflagging zest at the con- 
tinuous lines of surf on the other. The day's jour- 



270 CALTFORNIAN PICTURES. 

ney ends at Pescadero, a white, snug, New England 
looking village, on the level banks of a creek by the 
same name, which puts down from the redwoods to 
the sea and empties through a rolling pasture-land 
two miles from the town. Judging from its name, 
Pescadero must have been, in Mexican times, a favor- 
ite fishing resort; indeed it is yet, for the numerous 
streams in the vicinity abound in trout, other varie- 
ties of fish coming up with the tides from the sea, 
and the very surf on the shore containing a peculiar 
viviparous fish, the catching of which is amusing just 
in proportion to its uncertainty. The little oblong 
valley where the village stands was once a salt marsh, 
and is still a marsh at its seaward extremity. Shut 
in by long, wave-like hills, which are always green 
with chaparral thickets where they are not made into 
hay and grain fields, its proximity to the ocean is 
announced only by the morning mists and by the 
distant roar of the surf, which reminds one at night 
of the solemn monody of Niagara. The rolling up- 
land that leads out to the Pacific is a rich pasture, 



SANTA CRUZ MOUNTAINS. 27 1 

and forms part of a famous dairy range. Among the 
grass, within reach of the drenching spray, wild straw- 
berries are plentiful in the season. Suddenly this 
pasture edges upon a steep bluff that overlooks the 
ocean. At the foot of this bluff, and shallowing out 
to the rocky bar, lies a beach composed of wonderfully 
clean and beautiful pebbles, including jasper, agates, 
carnelians, and other siliceous stones, derived from 
an adjacent stratum of coarse friable sandstone, and 
worn lustrously smooth by constant rolling on the 
surf, which flings them back in huge windrows daily. 
The opaline, pearly, amethystine, amber, and ruby 
tints of these pebbles are enhanced as they lie wet at 
the edge of the surf. One seems to have fallen, like 
Sinbad, upon a Golconda of gems. The labor of pick- 
ing out the most beautiful of the small pebbles, which 
may not be larger than a pea, is very fascinating. 
People go to the beach to stay for an hour or two, 
and remain all day, reluctant to leave at last. Sober 
men of business, with hard lines of care on their 
faces, who put a monetary value on time, give them- 



272 CALIFORNIAN PICTURES. 

selves up to the beguilement almost as willingly as 
women and children. Groups of both sexes and all 
ages can be seen lying prone for hours, scratching 
with their hands for rare stones, shouting with pleas- 
ure when successful, or with pretty alarm when the 
surf pushes hissingly up to where they lie, leaving 
behind iridescent bubbles and brighter gleaming peb- 
bles. As the surf breaks and foams over the flat 
rocks running out from the beach, it has a singularly 
reverberant yet soothing sound, varied by the thun- 
derous roar that comes at intervals from the cliffs 
near by, where the spray tosses up to a great height. 
In the pools among the rocks, at low tide, one sees 
numerous beautiful polyps, grafted on the rocks like 
living chrysanthemums of the sea — animal flowers 
indeed. Upon neighboring benches of sand the 
pearly shell of the abalone is found, with many hand- 
some varieties of algae. Only five miles from this 
beautiful beach begin the superb forests of redwood 
which stretch up the western flanks of the Santa 
Cruz Mountains. A drive of three miles into the 



SANTA CRUZ MOUNTAINS. 273 

hills beyond Pescadero, the narrow roadway frequently 
embowered with willows, Cottonwood, alder, and bay 
trees, takes us into the very heart of a dense and 
solemn strove, whence sunlis^ht and sound are alike 
excluded, and the slightest motion or chirrup of a 
tree-squirrel seems a disturbance. The redwood is a 
species of the same genus {sequoia) to which the 
Big Trees of Calaveras and Mariposa belong, and 
rivals the latter in magnitude as it resembles them 
in general appearance. Nowhere else than in Cali- 
fornia is any species of this genus found, except as a 
fossil relic of a past geological epoch. But the red- 
wood surpasses the Big Tree in general effect, be- 
cause, as Professor Brewer says, it frequently forms 
the entire forest, while the Big Tree is nowhere found 
except scattered among other trees, and never in 
clusters or groups isolated from other species. In 
the graphic words of Professor Whitney : " Let one 
imagine an entire forest, extending as far as the eye 
can reach, of trees of from eight to twelve feet in 
diameter, and from two hundred to three hundred 
18 



2 74 CALIFORNIAN PICTURES. 

feet higb, thickly grouped, their trunks marvelously 
straight, not branching till they reach from one hun- 
dred to one hundred and fifty feet above the ground, 
and then forming a dense canopy, which shuts out 
the view of the sky, the contrast of the bright, cin- 
namon-colored trunks with the sombre deep yet brill- 
iant green of the foliage, the utter silence of these 
forests, where often no sound can be heard except 
the low thunder of the breaking surf of the distant 
ocean, — let one picture to himself a scene like this, 
and he may, perhaps, receive a faint impression of the 
majestic grandeur of the redwood forests of Califor- 
nia." Some of the redwoods in the forests near Pes- 
cadero measure from fifteen to twenty feet in diam- 
eter. Near Santa Cruz there is a grove containing 
equally large trees. Members of the Geological Sur- 
vey have reported trees in the northern part of the 
Coast Range from twenty-five to thirty feet in diam- 
eter, and three hundred feet high. A hollow red- 
wood stump exists near Eureka in which thirty-three 
pack-mules were stabled together. Near the summit 



SANTA CRUZ MOUNTAINS. 275 

of the Santa Cruz Range is a hollow tree in which an 
old hunter made his convenient home for a Ions: time. 
Professor Whitney relates that during the strong 
winds of 1861-62 redwood logs drifted out to sea 
along the northern coast in such immense numbers 
as to be dangerous to ships one hundred and fifty- 
miles from land. They were afterwards thrown ashore 
in great piles, and on being measured were found to 
vary from one hundred and twenty to two hundred 
feet in length; w^hile one of two hundred feet was 
ten feet in diameter at the base, and another of two 
hundred and ten feet, was three feet in diameter at 
the little end. In a thick forest of such giants the 
soil is kept moist and cool, and supports a luxuriant 
undergrowth, including ferns and delicate flowers. 
Animal life prefers the warmer and brighter regions 
of the oak, on the slopes or in the valleys, and the 
thickets of the comparatively treeless hills ; though at 
considerable elevation the redwoods are tenanted by 
the grizzly bear, which is sometimes more than a 
match for the luckless sportsman or traveler who 
encounters him. 



276 CALIFORNIAN PICTURES. 

The half day's drive from Pescadero to Santa Cruz, 
along the coast hills, and often over the very beach, 
is most exhilarating and picturesque. Always the 
rumpled folds of the bare sandstone mountains on 
one side, and the sunny surf and rolling ocean on the 
other, with occasional passages through ravines cano- 
pied by evergreen oaks and laurels, glimpses of white 
sails along the watery horizon, and precipitous out- 
looks over reefs where ships have been wrecked and 
their crews lost. A whale that is common off the 
coast, and is often pursued and captured by hardy 
men in small boats, who make this pursuit a busi- 
ness, is frequently seen blowing up his shining fount- 
ain of vaporous breath. At Pigeon Point there are 
odorous reminders that here leviathan is brought to 
the martyr's trial of fire for the good (oil) that is in 
him. 

Santa Cruz stands on a triple terraced plain be- 
tween the mountains of the same name and the lovely 
Bay of Monterey. Two long promontories jutting out 
about ten miles from the main-land, and about twenty 



SANTA CRUZ MOUNTAINS. 277 

miles apart, form the circular bay which is named 
from the old town on its lower side, Santa Cruz be- 
ing on the upper side. The portion of sea thus in- 
closed is more delicately blue than the open ocean, 
and usually more tranquil. Nothing can be more 
graceful than the bent bow line of its glistening 
sand beach, whereon the surf breaks gently, accent- 
ing with its whiteness the tender blue of the water be- 
yond. Behind the broad terraced valley which mar- 
gins the bay, and which is dotted with groves of 
live-oak disposed in an order almost artificial, rise the 
mountains above a tier of foot-hills, to a height of 
three thousand feet, dark with their forests of red- 
wood and fir, but taking on in certain conditions of 
the atmosphere deliciously soft tints of purple and 
violet and gray. It was in the midst of this noble 
landscape, equal to anything on the shores of the 
Mediterranean, that the Franciscan friars founded 
several of their earliest missions, raised the towers of 
their picturesque churches, which recall Castile and 
Granada, and labored to convert the simple aborig- 



2^]^ CALIFOKNIAN PICTURES. • 

ines. The ascent of the mountains from this side 
affords a series of grand views, including deep gorges, 
outcroppings of gray rock, vistas of red-trunked con- 
ifers, vapor-girdled peaks, undulating valleys, wind- 
ing streams, oak-embowered villages, and deep blue 
ocean. Above the crest of the range is the dark 
peak of Loma Prieta, luminous at sunset in a rich 
purple haze. At last the redwood forest completely 
shuts off the scenery on the western slope, and as we 
go eastward the next outlook is upon the oak-cov- 
ered hills and golden valleys of San Jose and Santa 
Clara, bounded again by the bare brown mountains 
of Alameda, which skirt the inner shores of San 
Francisco Bay, and stretch southward to the connect- 
ing ridges of the Gavilan. If the season is spring, 
all this region will be clad in a garment of light 
green, having an undertone of that soft gray so loved 
by painters, and variegated by wild-flower patches of 
every color, while silvery clouds will move idly in 
mid-heaven, casting their shadows over the landscape. 
Such are the contrasts of a climate which has two 
seasons, of a land 



SANTA CRUZ MOUNTAINS. 279 

Where birds ever sing, and summer and spring 

Divide the mild year between them ; 
Where the light-footed hours are told by gay flowers 

That need no hot-house to screen them ; 
Where there 's gold on the plain, in the ripe waving grain, 

And gold in the far purple hills ; 
Where the tall^ sombre pine giveth place to the vine, 

And the bee his sweet treasury fills. 



AUTOCHTHONES. 



No bronzed Apollos of the wood 
Those simple folk of El Dorado, 

Who peopled once the solitude 
From Shasta to the Colorado. 

But, short of stature, plain of mien. 
And lacking all the sculptured graces, 

They still were part of every scene. 

And song and science seek their traces. 

No monument of art arose 

Where once they dwelt in densest numbers ; 
The curious modern only knows 

By kitchen-heaps the tribe that slumbers. 

Or, raking in the blackened soil. 

He finds the tips of spears and arrows. 



A UTOCHTHONES. 2 8 1 

Wrought by the ancient artists' toil 

To slay all game from man to sparrows. 

Yet, artless as they were, and still 

As history will be about them, 
They did their Mother Nature's will. 

And Nature could not do without them. 

They were the Adams of the land, 

Who gave to hill and vale and river. 
To every tranquil scene or grand, 

The titles that recall the giver. 

While soft Solano spreads her plain, 
And lifts his head, tall Yallowballey — 

The vanished people will retain 
A monument in hill and valley, 

Yosemite their name inscribes 

On cataract and granite column ; 
And Tahoe murmurs of their tribes 

Among her peaks and forests solemn. 



THE FIRST PEOPLE. 



These sketches of scenery in California would be 
incomplete without some reference to the primitive 
people who once enjoyed that scenery exclusively, and 
who still remain here and there a picturesque ele- 
ment of it. Nature will not be divorced from her 
children. In their rudest estate their presence en- 
hances her charms, and valley, hill, and stream derive 
added interest from human association. After many 
hours, perhaps days, of lonely travel amid wild scen- 
ery, when the solitude of forests or the monotonous 
expanse of great plains has become oppressive, what 
a relief it was, in the days of youthful adventure, to 
see the smoke of an Indian camp curling up from 
a piney gorge, to come suddenly upon the comical 



THE FIRST PEOPLE. 283 

bark shelters which served the red man in the hicrher 
mountains, or to meet at the turn of a vahey stream 
a village of earth mounds, v^hose simple denizens re- 
garded the stranger with naive curiosity. To this 
day, the few survivors of once numerous tribes re- 
main as picturesque figures in many a landscape that 
would be less effective without them. They harmo- 
nize with earth, and rock, and tree, as well as the 
larks and quails, and places dispeopled of them seem 
to lack completeness. How much everywhere the 
presence of man modifies the aspect of a country. 
By what he does, or by what he leaves undone, the 
region he inhabits is made more or less attractive. 
One race, or one stage of culture, adapting itself 
to improving upon natural conditions, enhances the 
beauty of its habitat. Another race or stage of cult- 
ure, violating or neglecting those conditions, lessens 
or obliterates that beauty. All the Indian tribes of 
America lived in such a way as to leave the natural 
charms of their land unimpaired. They neither ex- 
tirpated forests nor impoverished the soil. The sites 



284 CALIFORNIAN PICTURES. 

of their encampments and villages were usually the 
most lovely spots. Even the aborigines of California, 
reckoned among the lowest of their kind, seemed to 
have a preference for the prettiest places. In the 
valleys, their villages would occupy a knoll or bluff 
overlooking the river and giving far vistas of the 
flowery plain through natural parks of oak. In the 
foot-hills, they would be found on some grassy slope 
by running water or perennial springs, under or near 
the shelter of pleasant groves. It is common to at- 
tribute the selection of such sites to an instinct for 
the beautiful, but there is really no good reason to 
credit these Indians, if any, with such a decided feel- 
ing for natural beauty as would be required to de- 
termine their choice of localities for camps or homes. 
The ideas and sentiments which make men fond of 
fine landscapes are largely the result of culture. It 
is only in the literature of refined nations that they 
assert themselves. That the Indian village has a fine 
site or commands the best view in the neighborhood 
is only a coincidence. He camps or builds where he 



THE FIRS 2' PEOPLE. 285 

finds the most suitable conditions for his mode of 
life. If in the great valleys of California he dwells 
by stream and grove, it is to be near water and fish- 
ing, and where, in the summer, he can be screened 
from the intense heat of the sun. If he choose a 
knoll or bluff, it is because his hut and his ricks of 
acorns and cereals will be secure against the floods 
that often spread over the lower land. On the same 
principle he selects banks of brooks or the grassy 
mounds of springs, in the hills, because they furnish 
him water and umbrageous shelter. In short, util- 
ity and not beauty is his aim ; and it happens that 
just the conditions which are useful to him enhance 
scenical beauty. By the reflex action of this there 
may in time be developed in savage man aesthetic 
appreciation, which doubtless grew at first by some 
such process of evolution. Without being too curi- 
ous on this point, however, let us be thankful to 
whatever cause put the figure of the red man amid 
scenes that would be less interesting without him. 
Looking back twenty-five or thirty years, we recall 



286 CALIFORNIAN PICTURES. 

those primitive landscapes where he moved about free 
and lithe as the antelope, over valleys where wild oats 
and flowers bordered his trail, where the only archi- 
tecture was his village of conical earth huts, among 
which stood poles decorated with the stuffed geese 
used for decoys to entrap the living bird. Over broad, 
level areas in the distance we can see a million wild 
fowl " feeding like one," the aggregate movement of 
their heads giving a peculiar ripple to the white sur- 
face of the vast flock. Herds of elk wend their way 
to drink from the river, and in the coverts of oak 
the deer gaze with innocent eyes, unsuspicious of 
danger. When the Mexican settlers came, the In- 
dians still remained ; but herds of domestic cattle 
disputed the pasture with their remote kindred, the 
elk ; and the flat, oblong houses of sunburnt bricks, 
with tiled roofs and court-yards, and here and there 
the towers of a church, gave a character quite Span- 
ish and sophisticated to the scenery. Men change, 
and nature with them. 

It must be said now that the aborigines of Cali- 



THE FIRST PEOPLE. 287 

fornia are rapidly passing away. Their number in 
1823 was estimated at one hundred thousand. Forty 
years later, in 1863, returns to the Indian Bureau 
made it twenty-nine thousand three hundred. At the 
present time it probably falls below twenty thousand, 
a quarter part of whom are in government reserva- 
tions or living under the protection and in the care 
of farmers ; while here and there, especially in the 
mountains, a few depleted tribes still enjoy the free- 
dom of their ancestors. Many beautiful valleys, once 
populous with them, know them no longer. The 
pioneer Yount, who settled in Napa Valley in 1830, 
used to say that it then contained thousands of In- 
dians of the larger tribe that gave the valley its name ; 
there are now only a few vagabond survivors haunt- 
ing the purlieus of town and farm. Probably the 
largest portion of the California Indians was always 
to be found in the big valleys of the interior, and 
those lesser ones lying between the spurs of the 
Coast Range, for it was in these localities that game, 
fish, seeds, and esculents were most abundant and 



288 CALIFORNIAN PICTURES. 

easily obtained. These lowland tribes looked sleek 
and well fed. They were more amiable and less war- 
like than their brethren of the highlands, who were 
often a terror to them. In the southern part of the 
State, along the coast, they were largely brought 
under the influence of the Mission Fathers ; but in 
the northern interior they had not had much contact 
with our race until after the American occupation. 
Twenty-one missions were established between the 
years 1769 and 1820, extending from San Diego, in 
the extreme southern portion of the State, to the 
neighborhood of the Bay of San Francisco, near its 
centre, that at Sonoma being the last and most north- 
erly. In the region above Sonoma, reaching to the 
Oregon border, and embracing an area three hundred 
and fifty miles long by one hundred or more wide, 
the aborigines knew very little of the greedy whites 
who have since displaced and nearly exterminated 
them. A few trappers and hunters, mostly Canadians 
in the employ of the Hudson Bay Company, had 
visited the head of the Sacramento Valley in search 



THE FIRST PEOPLE. 289 

of otter and beaver. Some of the voyageurs had 
even been accompanied by small bands of Oregon 
Indians, of more nomadic and warlike habits. At 
one time, early in this century, the Spanish governor 
of the then province of Alta California sent a mili- 
tary expedition from Monterey to the Sacramento 
Valley, to drive out some Russians who were re- 
ported to be there, but who were not found ; and old 
Gilroy, who was one of the party, used to tell how 
numerous the Indians were, and how much they were 
frightened by the discharge of a small howitzer from 
a mule's back, — for such was the primitive artillery 
of this quaint expedition. Between 1835 ^"^^ 1848, 
American emigrants began to establish " ranches " 
in the Sacramento and northern coast valleys. The 
docile natives readily gathered about them, sometimes 
for protection against the mountain Indians, and even 
engaged in their service as farm hands. Their labor 
was always voluntary, and the control over them was 
usually gentle. No concerted efforts were made to 
teach them religion or letters. They maintained their 
19 



2 go CALIFORNIAN PICTURES. 

tribal organization as before, and followed all their old 
habits. They were attracted to labor only by their 
desire for beads, blankets, garments, and some articles 
of our food of which they became very fond. Grad- 
ually, as the lands along the rivers were occupied, 
game driven away, and their fish-dams torn down to 
make way for steamboats and sailing craft, the In- 
dians mostly retired to the hills, whence, impelled by 
the sharp edge of a new appetite, they made thiev- 
ing descents on cattle-folds and stables. The settlers 
then too often regarded and treated them as enemies 
to be killed on sight. Many of the early border-men, 
who recognized no difference between these and the 
fierce, more aggressive savages they had known else- 
where, regarded them as natural enemies from the 
first, and would fire upon them as readily as upon a 
coyote. As late as 1850, however, many of the north- 
ern tribes were living undisturbed in their primitive 
condition, snaring geese and brant on the plains ; 
crawling upon the antelope in the tall grass with 
deceiving antlers on their heads ; catching salmon 



THE FIRST PEOPLE. 29 1 

and sturgeon nearly as long as themselves ; making 
baskets and network, bows and arrows, and capes of 
feathers ; wearing little clothing, ordinarily, but deco- 
rated sticks through the lobes of their ears and fringed 
aprons of tule (a kind of reed) about their loins ; toot- 
ing mournfully on their little flutes, made by removing 
the pith of certain woods ; gambling at their native 
games with excited vociferation ; sweating themselves 
in the great medicine houses; howling over their 
burnt or buried dead, — for they both cremated and 
inhumed, — and generally behaving in a way most 
uncivilized, but quite satisfactory to themselves ; a 
good-natured and harmless race, as a rule, liking 
the neighborhood of the whites when justly treated, 
and seldom presuming upon kindness. By their labor 
on the farms, when most of the whites were digging 
for gold, they helped in the first development of home 
agriculture, and thus played an important part in the 
early resources of the State, as before they had aided 
in building up and maintaining the mission settle- 
ments. It has been only since their numbers were 



292 CALIFORNIAN PICTURES. 

thinned and scattered that anybody has tried to make 
a thorough, systematic study of their tribal organi- 
zation, nomenclature, myths, and customs. Stephen 
Powers has latterly been devoting himself to this 
useful task with much zeal and success, and when 
he shall have published together the papers on this 
subject which have appeared separately in the " Over- 
land Monthly," the public will find the book one of 
the most interesting contributions to Indianology and 
what Tylor calls the science of primitive culture. 

Durins: the various rambles which furnished the 
material for these sketches of California scenery the 
writer was much interested in observing the evidences 
of former Indian occupation and handicraft. He had 
seen, a quarter of a century ago, that the tribes un- 
affected by contact with our civilization presented a 
perfect picture of the arts and customs of the later 
Stone age, when implements or weapons were pol- 
ished, and when woven and braided fabrics were 
made, and earthen huts gave the first kind of archi- 
tecture. He had exhumed from considerable depths 



THE FIRST PEOPLE. 293 

in the auriferous gravel deposits of the Sierra stone 
mortars and pestles and arrow-heads, like those still 
used by living tribes. In later journeys, therefore, it 
was a pleasant incidental task to follow again in the 
footsteps of the first people. There is no reason to 
believe that any tribes dwelt permanently at great 
elevations in the Sierra Nevada, if anywhere within 
the deep snow-line. In the summit valleys, about the 
lakes, and at the sources of streams, where these wild 
children of nature would find it most convenient and 
pleasant to live, the elevation above the sea is from 
five thousand to seven thousand feet, and the snow 
falls to a depth of from ten to twenty feet, contin- 
uing on the ground from November or December 
until June or July. Most of the lakes at this season 
are frozen and covered with snow; even the smaller 
streams are often banked over with snow ; and the 
game has fled to the lower portion of the range. 
But while the Sierra was not the constant home of 
the Indians, they resorted thither regularly in the 
summer season, from June or July to November, 



294 CALIFORNIAN PICTURES. 

except when they were denizens of the great lower 
valleys, which supplied them with all they needed in 
every season; these were, moreover, occupied by the 
less warlike tribes, who were seldom able to cope with 
their hereditary foemen of the mountains. The sum- 
mit region of the Sierra Nevada furnished good fish- 
ing in its lakes and some of its streams ; deer and 
mountain quail and grouse abounded ; huckleberries, 
thimble-berries, wild plums, choke-cherries, gooseber- 
ries, and various edible roots were tolerably plentiful ; 
the furry marten, weasel-like animals, woodchucks, and 
squirrels were tempting prey; the water was better, 
and the climate cooler, than at a less elevation ; hence 
this region was the summer resort of Indians from 
both slopes of the range, and often the possession of 
a valley by lake or river was decided by battle be- 
tween the various tribes from Nevada and California. 
The Hetch-Hetchy Valley, or " Little Yosemite," for 
instance, was, up to a very recent date, disputed 
ground between the Pah- U tabs, from the eastern 
slope, and the Big Creek Indians, from the western 



THE FIRST PEOPLE. 295 

slope, who had several fights, in which the Pah-Utahs 
(commonly called Piutes) were victorious. This state- 
ment was made to the California Academy of Sciences 
by Mr. C. F. HofTman of the State Geological Sur- 
vey, on the authority of Joseph Screech, a mountain- 
eer of that region ; and similar statements have been 
made to the writer by old mountaineers, with refer- 
ence to the Yosemite Valley and other former abo- 
riginal resorts along the summit of the Sierra. As 
the mountain Indians, and those of the Nevada pla- 
teau, were comparatively nomadic in their habits, they 
left few or none of the large black mounds, indicating 
long and constant residence, which were left so abun- 
dantly by the mud-hut builders of the Sacramento 
basin. Pieces of bark stripped from fallen pines or 
firs, and slanted on end against tree-trunks or poles, 
with a circle of stones in front for a fire-place, were 
the usual shelter of the California mountain tribes, 
except that in the northern extremity of the State, 
where the winter climate is more rigorous, some of 
the tribes — notably the Klamaths and their conge- 



296 CALIFORNIAN PICTURES. 

ners — built huts of roughly hewn logs, employing 
bark and brush shelters only in their summer fishing 
and hunting excursions. Speaking generally, there- 
fore, the mountain Indians have left few traces of 
themselves, except the stone implements which are 
occasionally unearthed, or still found in the possession 
of the wretched remnants of once powerful tribes. 

Alono^ the summit of the Sierra Nevada there is 
scarcely any memento of them to be found, except 
the arrow-heads shot away in hunting or fighting, or 
the broken arrow-heads and chips from the same to 
be gathered at places which have evidently been fac- 
tories of aboriginal weapons. The most notable find 
of this latter sort made by the writer was at the 
Summit Soda Springs, a most picturesque spot at 
the head of the northernmost fork of the American 
River, nine miles south of Summit Valley Station, 
on the Central Pacific Railroad. Here, at an eleva- 
tion of about six thousand three hundred feet above 
the sea, the river breaks through a tremendous ex- 
posure of granite, which it has worn into natural 



THE FIRST PEOPLE. 297 

gorges several hundred feet deep, except where it 
runs rapidly through valley-like glades of coniferous 
woods, in which the new soil is covered with a rank 
growth of grasses, flowering plants, and shrubs, where 
the deer come to drink at the salt-licks, and the 
piping of quails is constantly heard, alternating with 
the scolding cry of jays and the not unpleasant caw 
of the white-spotted Clark crow. Just in the rear of 
the public house kept at this locality, the river tum- 
bles in slight falls and cascades over slanting or per- 
pendicular walls of richly colored granite, shaded by 
beautiful groves of cedar and yellow pine, which grow 
in the clefts of the rock to the very edge of the 
stream, and crown the dark cliffs above. On the 
rounded tops of the ledge overlooking these foaming 
waters, on both sides of the stream, the Indians used 
to sit fashioning arrow-heads and other weapons of 
stone. This was their rude but romantic workshop ; 
and the evidences of their trade are abundant on the 
sloping rock, in the coarse, granitic soil which forms 
the talus of the ledsfe, and in the blackened litter of 



298 CALIFORNIAN PICTURES. 

their ancient camp-fires. They have left one record 
of themselves at this locality which is quite remark- 
able. A shelving ledge of granite on the right bank 
of the stream, worn to an even and almost smooth 
surface by glaciers or snow-slides, is covered for a 
hundred feet with rudely scratched characters, circles 
or shields inclosing what may have been meant for 
animal forms or other symbols of expression. They 
appear to have been cut or scratched on the ledge 
in comparatively recent times, for the very shallow 
incisions reveal a fresher rock than the general sur- 
face. The California Indians are not known to have 
possessed any method of writing, pictorial or oth- 
erwise; but these curious rock markings may have 
had some meaning to the people who made them. 
In the debris about this sculptured ledge, as well as in 
that among the rocks on the other side of the river, 
before it had been disturbed by visitors to the springs, 
fragments of arrow-heads, and chips of the materials 
composing them, could readily be found. Their flat 
shape and light specific gravity caused them to wash 



THE FIRST PEOPLE. 299 

to the top and one had only to look carefully, lightly 
raking with finger or stick the superficial gravel, to 
find many curious specimens. In this peculiar quest 
many persons, who cared nothing for the scientific 
or artistic suggestions of the simple objects sought, 
developed a strong interest. It kept them out of 
doors with nature ; it gave them a pretext for re- 
maining in the air by a lovely scene ; it aroused that 
subtle sympathy which is excited in all but the dull- 
est minds by the evidences of human association with 
inanimate things, and particularly by the relics of a 
race and a life which belong to the past. 

The Indians that congregated at this point, summer 
after summer, whether from Utah or California, em- 
ployed in arrow-head making every variety of siliceous 
rock, of slate, spar, and obsidian or volcanic glass. 
The larger heads were made of slate and obsidian, 
which materials also served for spear-heads, used in 
spearing fish, and from two to four inches long. Ob- 
sidian seems to have been better adapted for all sorts 
of heads than any other material. It could be shaped 



300 CALIFORNIAN PICTURES. 

with less risk of breaking in the process, and could 
be chipped to a much sharper edge and point. The 
points of some of the small obsidian heads gathered 
by the writer are so keen, even after burial or sur- 
face floating, that a slight pressure will drive them 
into the skin of the finger. The greater number of 
small arrow-heads found, as well as the greater pro- 
portion of the chips, consisted of jasper and agate, 
variously and beautifully colored and marked ; of ob- 
sidian, of chalcedony, of smoky quartz and feldspar ; 
very rarely of quartz crystal, and in only one in- 
stance of carnelian. While the larger heads measure 
from an inch and a half to four inches in length, 
with a breadth of half an inch to an inch and a 
half in the widest part, the smaller heads measure 
only from three quarters of an inch to an inch in 
length, their greatest breadth being seldom more than 
half an inch. The latter were evidently intended for 
small game, such as birds and squirrels. The work- 
men seem to have had more difficulty in making 
them, for they are often found broken and imperfect. 



THE FIRST PEOPLE. ZO\ 

This was due, not only to their size, but also chiefly 
to the difference in material, when the small vein- 
rocks were used, these breaking with a less even 
fracture, and being full of flaws. Persistence in the 
use of such uncertain material, when obsidian was 
so much better adapted to the purpose and equally 
abundant, would seem to have been dictated by a 
rudimental taste for the beautiful. A collection of 
the jasper, chalcedony, agate, and crystal heads and 
chips presents a very pretty mixture of colors, and the 
tints and handsome markings of these rocks could 
not but have influenced their selection by the In- 
dians, who spent upon their manipulation an infinite 
amount of care and patience. It is interesting to 
note even so slight an evidence of taste in these 
savages of the Sierra, especially when we remember 
it was supplemented by the artistic finish they gave 
to their bows and to the feathered shaft that bore the 
arrow-head, no less than to the quiver of wild skin 
in which the arrows were carried. There is some 
reason to suppose that the selection of the above 



302 CALIFORNIAN PICTURES. 

materials may occasionally have been decided by the 
superstitious attribution to them of occult qualities. 
Nearly all aboriginal tribes, and even some civilized 
races, have attached a peculiar sanctity and potency 
to certain stones, and the Chinese to this day give 
a religious significance to jade. It is uncertain, how- 
ever, to what extent such notions obtained among, and 
influenced the simple savages of California. None 
of the rocks used at this Indian workshop were ob- 
tained in the locality. The writer was able to trace 
their origin to Lake Tahoe, across the western crest 
of the Sierra, and not less than twelve or fifteen 
miles from the Soda Springs by any possible trail. 
There they are so abundant as to have partly formed 
the beautiful gravel beach for which the lake is so 
famous. The obsidian came from the ancient cra- 
ters that adjoin the lake, the source of those enor- 
mous ridges of volcanic material which form its out- 
let, the carion of Truckee River. Doubtless the flints, 
slates, and obsidian of this region formed objects 
of barter with the lower country Indians ; for the 



THE FIRST PEOPLE. 303 

writer remembers seeing arrow-heads of such material 
among the Sacramento Valley tribes twenty-five years 
ago. On the Lake Tahoe beaches are sometimes 
found spear-heads five inches long, with perhaps an 
inch of their original length broken off, generally at 
the barbed end. Similar materials were used and to 
some extent are still used by the mountain Indians 
in the northern Sierra as far as Mount Shasta, the 
rocks of the crest furnishing them everywhere along 
the line of volcanic peaks which dominate the range. 
In the Coast Range supplies of obsidian were ob- 
tained by the northern tribes from the region about 
Clear Lake, where there is an entire mountain of 
this material; The antiquity and former great num- 
ber of the tribes in this region are attested by the 
wash of obsidian arrow and spear-heads, flakes and 
chips, about the shore of the lake. The beach at the 
lower end is fairly shingled with them. About the 
flanks of Mount Shasta, especially on the McCloud 
River side, obsidian is again very plentiful, and, with 
some beautifully variegated jaspers, seems to have 



304 CALIFORNIAN PICTURES. 

been most used. The writer found extensive chip- 
pings of it at several points on the head-waters of 
the Sacramento, notably at Bailey's Soda Springs, 
thirteen miles south of Strawberry Valley, where the 
Castle Rocks — fantastic crags of granite — push up 
through the slates and lavas of the neighborhood two 
thousand five hundred feet above the river. Here, 
as at the Summit Soda Springs, the Indians had 
chosen one of the most charmingly picturesque spots 
for an arrow-head factory. But here, as elsewhere, 
something else than an instinct for the beautiful 
moved them in their choice of locality. There is 
fine trout and salmon fishing in the river, while there 
are no fish at all in the upper North American, near 
the Summit Springs, owing to the falls which prevent 
fish from ascendinof. 

Again, the snow-fall is not so great on the Sacra- 
mento as to drive the Indians away in the winter. Its 
banks are their preferred home at all seasons. There 
they still fish and hunt, and are more nearly in a 
primitive condition than their kindred farther south, 



THE FIRST PEOPLE. 30 5 

who are now few in number and more or less do- 
mesticated with the whites. Since the Indians of the 
Sierra Nevada came into famihar contact with the 
whites, they have adopted fire-arms in preference to 
bows and arrows, when they can obtain them, and, 
where they retain the latter, now generally use metal 
or artificial glass in making arrow or spear heads. In 
a great measure, also, they have abandoned the use 
of the stone-mortars employed for so many years by 
their ancestors, and which about Mount Shasta, as 
perhaps in other volcanic regions, were made of tra- 
chyte, as certain other implements were made of red 
lava. 

It may increase the interest of this sketch to de- 
scribe the method used in the manufacture of arrow- 
heads, which was the first trade of primitive man. 
Mr. E. G. Waite, in a paper contributed to the 
" Overland Monthly," described as follows the process 
he saw in use among the Indians of central and 
northern California, in the early days of American 
settlement. The rock of flint or obsidian, esteemed 



306 CALIFORNIAN PICTURES. 

by the natives for arrow-pointing, is first broken into 
flat pieces, and then wrought into shape after this 
fashion : " The palm of the left hand is covered by 
buckskin, held in its place by the thumb being thrust 
through a hole in it. The inchoate arrow-head is laid 
on this pad along the thick of the thumb, the points 
of the fingers pressing it firmly down. The instru- 
ment used to shape the stone is the end of a deer's 
antler, from four to six inches in length, held in the 
right hand. The small round point of this is judi- 
ciously pressed upward on the edge of the stone, 
cleaving it away underward in small scales. The 
arrow-head is frequently turned around and over to 
cleave away as much from one side as the other, and 
give it the desired size and shape. It is a work of 
no little care and skill to make even so rude an in- 
strument as an arrow-head seems to be, only the 
most expert being successful at the business. Old 
men are usually seen at this employment. This man- 
ufacture of arrow-heads by a primitive people readily 
suggests the origin of trade. In the earlier stages of 



THE FIRST PEOPLE . 307 

human development, when man wore a skull of the 
Neanderthal type, the maker of the best weapons was 
the most successful in coping with the cave bear, 
liyena, and other animals of the period. His arrow- 
heads and other arms of stone were models. Super- 
stition invested them also with an infallible crift to 
kill. His well shaped and charmed weapons would 
be sought after. Suppose this ancient troglodyte and 
mighty Nimrod should be wounded and crippled for 
life in one of his fierce encounters with formidable 
beasts, what would self-preservation demand, what 
would be the unanimous voice of his tribe, but that 
he must become the armorer for the whole } What 
better could he do than fashion the arms that would 
furnish the most food for himself, his family, his kind .? 
' Bring me, then,' he would say, ' a certain share of 
the fruits of the chase, and I will give you the instru- 
ments that yield the surest rewards.' Here, then, a 
skilled artisan began his workshop, the chips of which 
in piles survive him by thousands of years in the 
caves of the old world. Thus barter began, and man, 



308 CALIFORNIAN PICl'URES. 

little by little engaged in diversity of employment, ac- 
cording to natural or acquired abilities." The method 
of finishing arrow-heads described by Mr. Waite as 
prevailing among the California Indians is substan- 
tially the same as that observed by A. W. Chase of 
the United States Coast Survey, among the Kla- 
maths so recently as 1873. A drawing made by him 
of the implement used by the artisan of this tribe 
closely resembles the figure of such an implement 
given in Tylor's work on prehistoric art in Europe. 
Catlin describes a similar method and instrument in 
use among the tribes east of the Rocky Mountains. 
They broke a cobble of flint with a rounded peb- 
ble of horn-stone set in a twisted withe as a handle, 
then selected such pieces as from the angles of their 
fracture and thickness would answer as a basis of an 
arrow-head. The finishing process is described as fol- 
lows : " The master workman, seated on the ground, 
lays one of these flakes on the palm of his left hand, 
holding it firmly down with two or more fingers of 
the same hand, and with his right hand, between the 



THE FIRST PEOPLE. 309 

thumb and two forefingers, place his chisel or punch 
(made of bone) on the point that is to be broken off; 
and a cooperator (a striker) sitting in front of him, 
with a mallet of very hard wood, strikes the chisel or 
punch on the upper end, flaking the flint ofl" on the 
under side, below each projecting point that is struck. 
The flint is turned and chipped until the required 
shape and dimensions are obtained, all the fractures 
being made on the palm of the hand." This is more 
elaborate than the California method, which was car- 
ried on by a single workman. Catlin also describes 
his two artisans as singing exactly in time with the 
strokes of the mallet. Leaving out the minor differ- 
ences, there is a strong likeness in all the primitive 
methods and implements the world over, showing the 
instinctive readiness of the race to originate independ- 
ently the same methods and forms under the same 
circumstances. 

Going back to the days before the pale-face invaded 
their land, one can easily recall groups of California 
aborigines, seated on the picturesque lake and river 



3IO CALIFORNIAN PICTURES. 

spots chosen for their homes or summer resorts, sort- 
ing out the beautiful stones they had procured for 
arrow-heads, and chipping away slowly as they chat- 
ted and laughed, while the river sang, or the cataract 
brawled, or the pine woods soughed, as musically and 
kindly to them as to us. 



SONG OF THE VAOUERO. 



A LIFE on the prairie long and wide, 
Where the wild oats roll in golden tide, 
And the hills are blue on either side. 

A life on the fleet and eager steed, 
With strain of Arab in his breed, 
Circling around the herd as they feed. 

A life as free as the air I drink, 

That flows like wine from the bubbling brink 

Of glasses that touch in social drink. 

Ha ! With a toss of my lasso true, 
The stoutest bull of the herd I threw, 
As over the vale he wildlv flew. 



3 1 2 CALIFORNIAN PICTURES. 

Ha ! When the grizzly ventured afield, 
Leaving the shelter chaparrals yield, 
He fell a prey to the loop I vi'ield. 

Ha ! With a skill that was surer yet, 

I flung my terrible lariat, 

And dragged to his death the foe I met. 

Juanita smiles as I gallop by ; 

Soft is the light of her darkling eye. 

And red is her lip as the berry's dye. 

Juanita smiles, for she knows the hand 
That flies the lasso, and the marking brand 
With equal skill can the lute command. 

Juanita smiles, for she knows the time 
Is fixed, for the Mission's wedding chime 
When the rain has brought the flowers prime. 

Then the glad festa's joy will begin, 
The Castanet and guitar's sweet din, 
As the neighbors all come trooping in. 



SONG OF THE VAQUERO. 313 

Then will the dancers happily beat 
The waltz of Castile with lightsome feet, 
While horsemen race in the contest fleet. 

Then life will be sweet to groom and bride, 
Where the wild oats roll their golden tide, 
And the hills are blue on either side. 



THE TRINITY DIAMOND. 



It was a hot June day in 1850, when we started, 
Brandy and I, from the American River, where we 
had been for nearly a year unsuccessfully mining, to 
seek our fortunes on the Trinity. A tramp of three 
hundred miles, through a lonely valley and over rug- 
ged mountains, lay before us ; but we were full of 
pluck and strength. Glowing reports had reached 
us from the far north, and we liked adventure. The 
country was new, strange, and unpeopled. It seemed 
as foreign to us as the West Indies and Mexico did 
to the Spanish adventurers under Columbus and Cor- 
tez, and we had the same golden dreams that lured 
those pioneers, tinging all our future with blissful 
hopes. Imagine two young fellows, with unkempt 



THE TRINITY DIAMOND. 315 

locks, under broad-brimmed felt hats of a drab color, 
clad in gray woolen shirts, and blue dungaree trou- 
sers — the latter held up by a leather belt about the 
waist, and tucked into long-legged boots, the belt 
itself holding a sheath-knife, Revolver, tin drinking- 
cup, and rubber flask ; on their backs neatly bundled 
blankets, strapped across their shoulders, and inclos- 
ing a small package of raw pork, sea-biscuit, and tea, 
while over each bundle lay, bottom up, a large tin 
pan, glistening in the sun, and suggesting visions 
of the dairy and rural homes far away. There you 
have the portraits of two prospectors. We belonged 
to the noble army of explorers that found and opened 
the treasure-vaults of the Sierra Nevada and Rocky 
Mountains ; that planted the seeds of empire from 
the upper Missouri to the Pacific ; that whitened 
western seas and streams with the sails of a new 
commerce, laid an iron road across the continent, 
and aroused the sluggish civilization of Asia to new 
motives. Those heroes of the pick and pan were 
not romantic figures ; their triumphs were not bloody 



3l6 CALIFORNIAN PICTURES. 

ones ; but see what they achieved for the world, and 
cease to despise them if they failed to achieve much 
for themselves. 

As for Brandy and I, we trudged on, chatting, 
whistling, and singing, intent on finding virgin gold- 
beds far from the crowded placers we had left. We 
had read Humboldt ; had traced the gold formation 
through South and Central America and Mexico to 
California; fancied it must link farther north with 
that in Siberia, and the Ural Chain, and were resolved 
to push even beyond the Trinity, if that stream did 
not enrich us speedily. Our mining implements, a 
tent, some cooking utensils, a few clothes, and sev- 
eral months' supply of salt meat and flour, we had 
sent ahead in a wagon to Reading's Springs, in the 
Shasta Hills, whence they were to be transferred by 
pack-mules to Trinity River on our arrival. The 
scanty provisions we carried on our backs we ex- 
pected to eke out with occasional meals at the ran- 
chos along the Sacramento River. One of us carried 
a rifle, for protection against any unfriendly Indian 



THE TRINITY DIAMOND. 317 

or savage beast that might obstruct our way. Thus 
equipped we pushed ahead, averaging thirty miles a 
day with ease. The level valley was covered with a 
ripening growth of wild oats, and looked like a vast 
harvest-field, bounded on one side by the purple wall 
of the Coast Range, on the other by the hazy out- 
lines of the more distant Sierra, and ahead only by 
the dazzling sky, save where an occasional grove of 
oaks marked a bend or branch of the river, and 
loomed up in the hot, shimmering air, with an effect 
as if a silvery sheet of water flooded its site. It was 
a lovely spectacle, as this sea of grain, in places as 
high as our heads, waved its yellowing surface like a 
true ocean. The road through it was not well de- 
fined after we left Knight's Landing, and we wan- 
dered off by Indian trails far from the river ; so that, 
on one occasion, we traveled sixty miles before meet- 
ing with water fit to drink. A few pools, the rem- 
nants of the previous winter's flood, were found in 
hollows of blue, clayey soil, hot, putrescent, and sick- 
ening. At one such place, where a lone tree broke 



31 8 CALIFORNIAN PICTURES. 

the monotony of the plain, the air was populous with 
dragon-flies of great size and brilliant colors, whose 
gauzy wings often touched our hands and faces, while 
swarms of yellow hornets hovered over the mud and 
myriads of mosquitoes hummed their maddening song. 
A few yellow blossoms still flaunted their beauty on 
the spot, though most of the plants had been tram- 
pled down by thirsty cattle. We pushed on till late 
in the night, then spread our blankets on the earth, 
and, regardless of the coyotes that barked querulously 
around us, slept under a roof of splendid stars. 

What a delight it was, after a hot tramp, to reach a 
clear, pebbly creek, to drink and bathe in its waters, 
and then, under a grove of noble oaks trellised with 
vines, to drink from the adjoining rancho, and eat 
blackberries picked by the Indians along the stream. 
At that time the settlements on the upper Sacra- 
mento were few and far between. They consisted 
of an adobe house or two, tenanted by a family of 
mixed races, the man being an American or Euro- 
pean, the woman a Mexican or Kanaka; while near 



THE TRINITY DIAMOND. 319 

by were the earthen huts of a few amiable Digger 
Indians, who did the fishing and hunting, and most 
of the farm-work, satisfied with blankets, coffee and 
sugar, and a few old clothes, for their wages. These 
ranchos were usually on the bank of the Sacramento 
or some confluent, and were stocked with large herds 
of half-wild cattle. Some of them became the sites 
of towns at a later day. Their owners were very 
hospitable to the few adventurers who called on them 
before the grand rush to the northern mines set in, 
and I often recall their hearty words and homely 
cheer with gratitude. 

One night we stopped at a log cabin lately built 
by Missouri squatters. As we neared it, some time 
after dark, we heard the sound of a fiddle, went to 
the open doorway, and looked in. There was a rude 
bar garnished with a few black bottles. At one end 
of the bar sat the fiddler upon a keg, while a num- 
ber of stout fellows in buckskin were leaning on the 
bar, or against the log walls. Presently a tall, broad- 
shouldered man in a butternut suit opened a rough 



320 CALIFORNIAN PICTURES. 

"shake " door leading into a second apartment, and 
shouted, " Gentlemen, make way for the ladies ! " 
At this he led forth a female who was " fat and 
forty," but hardly fair, — a very short and plump 
person, clad in plain calico, her face shining as if it 
had been oiled, her eyes bright with laughter. Be- 
hind her came a thin girl of ten or twelve years, 
who bore traces of a recent struggle with fever and 
ague, and whose yellow hair hung down in two big 
braids, tied with blue ribbons. There was to be a 
dance, and these were the ladies. The fiddler struck 
up " The Arkansas Traveler," and the ball began. 
Of course every gentleman had to wait his turn for 
a partner, except as they made what were called 
" stag couples." It must be said that the ladies were 
compliant and enduring. They danced with every- 
body and nearly all the time. They even invited 
the " stranger " at their gate to " take a turn," — an 
invitation that youthful modesty alone caused us to 
decline. When we went to sleep under the big oak 
fronting the cabin, the rasping tones of the back- 



THE TRINITY DIAMOND. 321 

woods fiddler were still heard, as also the clat-clat 
of the loose planks on the cabin floor keeping time. 
At last we reached Reading's Springs, — a famous 
mining camp in those days, which has since grown 
into the town of Shasta. Here we gave the charge of 
our outfit to the Mexican owners of a pack-train, and 
started with them across the mountains for Trinity- 
River. The train consisted of about thirty mules ; 
and we helped to drive them over a narrow trail 
which had been marked out with no regard to easy 
gradients. The heavily laden brutes grunted and 
groaned as they tugged up the steep, conical hills 
between Shasta and Trinity Mountain. They would 
often run off" into the woods, and then the shouts and 
curses of the Mexicans, although in mellow Spanish, 
were startling to the very trees and rocks. But the 
hardships of the trip only gave a keener zest to our 
enjoyment of the mountain air and water, so deli- 
cious after our experience in the valley; of the luxu- 
riant and varied vegetation, the aromatic odors of 
the pines, the music of rippling brooks, the dizzy 



32 2 CALIFORNIA N PICTURES. 

glimpses of vaporous canons yawning below, the noble 
vistas of far peaks as we climbed higher and higher, 
and sat with beating hearts and white lips on the 
summit of Trinity Mountain. Descending this ele- 
vation, we reached the river of our hopes, followed 
its course to the North Fork, and pitched our tent 
under a tall yellow pine on the bar below the mouth 
of that stream. Trinity River is a cold nymph of 
the hills. All its course is through the tumultuous 
peaks that mark the blending of the northern Sierra 
and Coast Range ; and it has always a touch of its 
native ice. Whirling through rocky cafions with 
foam and roar; darkened by overhanging precipices, 
by interlacing pine and fir, or hanging vines ; gliding 
into narrow valleys, that margin it with meadow\s and 
tremulous-leaved cotton-woods, and spreading out in 
broader bottoms to coax the sun, — it is still the same 
cold stream, until it reaches the literally golden sands 
of its ocean outlet through the Klamath. When 
we saw it in 1850, it was beautifully clear, and its 
wooded banks were wildly picturesque. Hardly more 



THE TRINITY DIAMOND. 323 

than fifty miners were trying to tear the golden se- 
cret from its breast, and the emptyings from their 
rockers did not sully its purity. Indians fished in 
it, and the deadly combats of the male salmon often 
sent free offerings to their hands. The miners them- 
selves would sometimes watch these finny tragedies, 
and swim after the vanquished lover for their dinner. 
It was a new sensation to strike our picks into the 
virgin cobble-beds, among tuft grass and thickets of 
rose-brier ; to overturn gray boulders, never disturbed 
before ; to shovel up from the soft bed-rock the gold- 
seeded gravel that promised a harvest of comfort and 
happiness. It was pleasant to have our sweating toil 
eased by the cool breezes that daily blew up from the 
sea; though when one of these breezes became a gale, 
tossed the coals from our camp-fire into our poor 
tent, and lighted a flame that consumed our shelter 
and supplies, making the rifle and pistols fire an irreg- 
ular salute, the sea wind was not blessed. The near- 
est trading-post was ten miles below, at Big Bar ; and 
a weary journey it was, over a lofty mountain, to reach 



324 CALIFORNTAN PICTURES. 

it, while all that we bought had to be packed on our 
own backs. Beef-cattle were lowered down the steep 
descent by the aid of ropes, and their flesh was pre- 
cious. The butcher of Big Flat was an eccentric 
Yankee. As meat was fifty cents a pound, the por- 
tions without bone were in great demand, for econom- 
ical reasons. Liver was in particular request. As it 
was impossible to find an ox all liver, and the Stras- 
bourg goose-fattening process would not apply to cat- 
tle, our butcher was obliged to adopt some plan to 
relieve himself of a difficulty. It was his habit, when 
a customer asked for liver, to inquire, " Have you a 
canvas-patch where you sit down ? " And when the 
customer would naturally respond, " Why, what 's that 
got to do with it } " he would answer, philosophically, 
" If you have n't got a patch on your breeches, you 
can't have any liver ; that 's what. There is n't liver 
enough for everybody ; there 's got to be something 
to discriminate by, and it might as well be a canvas- 
patch as anything else." And to this impartial rule 
he faithfully adhered, albeit canvas-patches began to 



THE TRINITY DIAMOND. 325 

multiply, and other parts of the animal econom}^ like 
the heart, had to be pressed into service. 

On the bar where Brandy and I opened a claim 
and started our rockers only three more men were 
working. They owned and operated in common a 
large quicksilver machine. We soon knew them as 
Peter the Dane, English George, and Missouri. The 
nomenclature of the early mining epoch was original 
and descriptive. Individuals, like places, were named 
in a way to indicate peculiar traits or circumstances. 
Thus, my partner. Brandy, whose real name was Wil- 
liam, — a slender, fair-skinned, blue-eyed fellow, of 
temperate habits, — had a high color in his cheeks 
that a rough comrade called a brandy-blush. The 
joke was too good not to live, and so the name of 
Brandy clung to him for years, being varied occa- 
sionally to Cognac, by way of elegant euphemism. 
Our Trinity River neighbors were all named from 
their nativity, the signs of which they bore plainly in 
speech and looks. 

Peter had served in the navies of three nations, 



326 CALIFORNIAN PICTURES. 

ending with the United States. He was a young 
man of cuhivation and genius ; kept a journal in 
Greek, to conceal its secrets from his comrades before 
the mast; acquired English from the library of the 
man-of-war Ohio ; had a good knowledge of our liter- 
ature ; spoke French and German well ; was a clever 
draftsman and musician, and a witty, brilliant talker. 
But he was only Peter the Dane, except, indeed, when 
called " Dutch Pete " by a class of Americans who 
think everybody Dutch (or German) who says "ja." 
We sympathized on the subject of poetry and music. 
Indeed, it was my whistling " Casta Diva," while rock- 
ing the cradle, that made us acquainted. He used 
to recite poems from the Danish of Oehlenschlager, 
which I would render into English verse. He went 
through " Hakon Jarl" in that way — the recitation 
at night by our camp-fire, the pines soughing over- 
head, the river roaring below ; a truly appropriate 
scene for a Norse epic. The ink to write out my 
translation I made from the juice of ripe elder ber- 
ries. One night Peter and I went to Big Bar, and 



THE TRINITY DIAMOND. 327 

crossed the river by crawling over the branched top 
of an Indian fish-dam, on our hands and knees, to 
hear a vioHn that somebody owned in that wild place. 
The night was so pitchy dark that we could not see 
the white foam on the rapids around us ; and we did 
not know what a fool-hardy feat we had performed 
till the next day. 

George was a simple-minded, ignorant Englishman, 
credulous and kind-hearted, who had made a voyage 
or two, when he heard of the gold discovery, worked 
his passage to San Francisco, and had drifted up to 
the Trinity, in eager quest of a fortune for his old par- 
ents and his sweetheart in England. He was a good 
worker, and a good listener. It was curious that two 
such men should come together; more curious they 
should have for a partner Missouri, — familiarly called 
" Misery," — a lank, sallow man, with long, straight, 
yellow hair, tobacco - oozing mouth, broad Western 
speech, a habit of exaggeration that was always aston- 
ishinor, and a cold selfishness that he took no pains 
to conceal. My partner, Brandy, had been a dentist 



328 CALIFORNIAN PICTURES. 

in New York, was still ready to pull or fill a tooth, 
and enjoyed as much as others the tones of his rich 
baritone voice in laugh or song. 

These comprised the company that used to meet 
about a common fire at night, smoke their pipes to- 
gether, talk of home and its friends, exchange ex- 
periences, tell stories, sing songs, and crack jokes at 
one another's expense. Peter used to tell of his ad- 
ventures at sea ; often with so much humor that we 
laughed till our sides ached. " Misery " related his 
adventures with " bars " and " Injins," and told us 
how he " made things bile " when he mined at Hang- 
town, where the gold poured down his " Tom " in 
" a yaller stream." Brandy used to sing " The Old 
Folks at Home," until the tears came into all eyes 
but Missouri's though even he grew quiet under its 
influence. From how many thousand mining-camps, 
in early years, — before daily mails, telegraphs, and 
Pacific Railroad, — went up that song of the heart, 
with its tender, refining, and saving influence ! Well 
might old Fletcher say, " Let me make the songs of 
a nation, and I care not who makes its laws." 



THE TRINITY DIAMOND. 329 

Sometimes we got into controversies — not on pol- 
itics, for we never saw newspapers nor heard politi- 
cians ; nor on religion, for we did not know certainly 
what day was Sunday, nor care for creeds, so long as 
men were honest and kind. But literary memories, 
and subjects connected with our daily life, would pro- 
voke talk enough. One night I wondered if there 
might not be diamonds in the gold deposits of Cali- 
fornia — w^hy not along Trinity River ? I had found 
some very small rubies. 

"Oh," said Peter, "they are likely enough to be 
found, if we would only look for them. I have fan- 
cied them rolling off the hopper of our machine 
many a time. They have been found in the mines of 
the Ural, and I was even told of small ones being 
found in the southern dry diggings of California. 
You know something about precious stones, Brandy, 
what do you think ? " Brandy rejoined : " It is true 
the diamond is found in s^old formations, associated 
with clay or drift, as in Brazil, Georgia, and North 
Carolina. The most famous district is Golconda, 



330 CALIFORNIAN PICTURES. 

Hindostan. In the rough, the stone looks Hke a 
quartz pebble, or one of the bits of rounded glass 
found on sea-beaches near cities. Unless a person 
was familiar with its appearance in this state, he 
would surely throw it away as worthless. If it was 
fractured and of good size it might attract attention 
by its lustre, and be saved by one ignorant of its real 
nature as a pretty stone." 

George listened to this speech with unusual inter- 
est. Missouri declared his intention to look out for 
ground pebbles " mighty sharp " after this. 

Brandy added that diamonds were sometimes found 
in connection with oxide of iron, and might have 
a metallic look on their rough surface ; and at this 
George gave him a quick, keen glance. 

" Well, it would pay better to find a big diamond 
than a gold-mine," said Peter. " Napoleon had a sin- 
gle diamond in the hilt of his sword of state that 
was worth a million dollars. It weighed four hun- 
dred and ten carats. The Braganza diamond weighs 
sixteen hundred and eighty grains, and is valued at 
twenty-eight million dollars." 



THE TRINITY DIAMOND. 331 

Here " Misery " gave a long whistle, followed by 
a yelping laugh, and the characteristic exclamation, 
" That takes my pile." 

" How big are diamonds found ? " asked George, 
after the laughter excited by the Missourian's racy 
expression of incredulity had subsided. 

" Oh, half the size of an egg ; as big as a walnut, 
sometimes," said Brandy, rather wildly. 

" As big as a piece of chalk," added " Misery," 
with a leer that let out the tobacco-juice. 

Peter remembered that Empress Catherine of Rus- 
sia boudit of a Greek merchant a diamond as large 
as a pigeon's egg, which had formed the eye of an idol 
in India. A French soldier stole it from the pagoda, 
and sold it for a trifle. (" What a dumb fool ! " in- 
terposed Missouri.) The Greek got four hundred and 
fifty thousand dollars for it, an annuity of twenty 
thousand dollars, and a title of nobility. 

George's eyes dilated. I had never seen him tak- 
ing so much interest in any conversation. 

" Ah ! if we could only find the other eye.''" I sug- 
gested, " we might all quit this slavish work." 



33^ CALIFORNIAN PICTURES. 

" That reminds me," struck in Peter, " that it is 
the custom in Brazil to Hberate a negro who finds a 
diamond of over seventeen and a half carats. The 
search there is followed by some thousands of slaves 
digging like us. Since we must dig anyhow, why 
not keep a keen eye on the hopper ? " 

" Wall, Brandy, kin yer tell us how the diamond 
comes ? " asked Missouri. 

" I guess they grow," replied Brandy, with a merry 
laugh, and a wink at me. 

" Perhaps there is more in that than you think," 
said Peter. " The diamond is proved to have mi- 
nute cavities ; and as it was formed from a solu- 
tion, it must have been once in a soft state. It may 
enlarge when left in its original place — eh ? The 
darkies believe that diamonds grow ; and perhaps 
this notion originated from their being found some- 
times in clusters, like crystals of quartz. The natives 
of Golconda had the same notion formerly. They 
felt for the diamond with their naked feet, in a black 
clay, as we hunted for clams at low tide in happy 
valley, boys." 



THE TRINITY DIAMOND. 333 

All laughed at this conceit. My partner thought 
Peter was joking altogether. The latter said gravely 
he could quote good authority. 

" I remember when I was on board the Ohio, read- 
ing the travels of Sir John Mandeville. He relates 
that in Ethiopia the diamonds were as large as beans 
or hazel-nuts, square, and pointed on all sides without 
artificial working, growing together, male and female, 
nourished by the dew of heaven, and bringing forth 
children that multiply and grow all the year. He 
testifies that he knew from experiment that if a man 
kept a small one and wet it with May-dew often, it 
would grow annually, and wax great." 

Here there was another laugh, in which Peter 
joined. George alone looked serious, and inquired 
if diamonds might not be even bigger than any that 
had been mentioned. Brandy thought they might be ; 
he knew nothing to prevent it. A diamond was of no 
more account in Nature's operations than any other 

stone. 

Georee then related, with nervous haste, his native 



334 CALIFORNIAN PICTURES. 

dialect coming out strong as he spoke, that when 
he was alone on the river, before he went clown to 
San Francisco for supplies, he found a curious-look- 
ing stone in the hopper of his cradle. As he was 
rubbing down some lumps of clay with one hand, 
while he poured water from a dipper with the other, 
this stone became very clear, and seemed to have a 
glazed, metallic coating, except on the side where it 
had been broken. He picked it out and threw it on 
the dry sand behind him, intending to take it to his 
tent " jest for fun loike." A few minutes later, as 
he sat rocking again, his eye fell on the stone where 
it lay, dry, fractured side up, "flashin' in the sun jest 
loike a dimon', but colored loike a rainbow." He 
thought it a pretty thing to keep, saved it, and when 
he went to the Bay took it along with him, and left 
it in the locker of his sea-chest, at a miner's board- 
ing-house on Pacific Wharf. " An' noo I wonder," 
he continued, almost breathlessly, " if it were na a 
dimon' truly." 

Missouri — who was in the habit of gibing George, 



THE TRINITY DIAMOND. . 335 

as one ignorant man will often gibe another more 
simple than himself — did not laugh at him, nor ut- 
ter contemptuous comment. He sat eying him in 
attentive silence, with the look that I fancied he 
may have worn when he " turned up the belly of 
an Ingin on the creek," as he had boasted one day 
he did. He had lived in Oregon years before, and 
" thought no more of shootin' one o' them red dev- 
ils than a rattlesnake." 

Peter asked how big the stone was, and George 
replied that it was as big as his fist. Brandy sug- 
gested it was a fine quartz crystal. If it were a dia- 
mond, it would be worth more than anybody could 
afford to pay ; and George might have to remain 
poor after all, for want of a purchaser. 

Peter gravely observed, there was no reason why 
a larger diamond than any yet known might not be 
found on Trinity River. As they had not found 
much gold, there was more room for precious stones, 
and a big one could be divided and sold easily 
enough. 



ZZ^ CALIFORNIAN PICTURES. 

George said that it was very bright. He had 
often seen it shining in his tent at night ; and when 
he put it in the till of his chest, it shone there in 
the dark. He declared he meant to show it to a 
jeweler, when he went down again. It might be 
worth " somethink," if it were no diamond. 

Missouri still listened in silence ; and no more was 
said on the subject by any one. Brandy stirred up 
the embers of the fire, we lit our pipes again, smoked 
a short time, sang " The Old Folks at Home," and, 
separating for the night, went each one to his blank- 
ets and to sleep, while the wind roared through the 
pines like a beating surf, and the rapids rumbled and 
thundered through the rocky caiion of the river. 

The next day Missouri said he was going up the 
river, to a new trading station he had learned was 
recently started there, to get some tobacco and pow- 
der. As he might stay over night he would take 
his blankets, and his rifle of course, for that he al- 
ways carried on his shortest excursions. He insisted 
on a division of the amalgam, as he always did when 



THE TRINITY DIAMOND. 2>Z7 

ooins: to the store, because he was an inveterate 
gambler at poker, and every store had then its gam- 
bhng table. His partners had long since learned 
that it was useless to remonstrate with him ; so they 
weighed him his dust, gave him two or three com- 
missions, and off he went, whistling " The Arkansas 
Traveler." 

We never saw him again. Days passed without 
tidings of him. We thought he must either have 
fallen a victim to a grizzly, or to one of his old ene- 
mies, the Indians. One of us went up to the new 
store at last, and learned that he had not stopped 
there, except for a drink of whiskey, but had pushed 
across the mountains toward Weaverville, on the road 
to Shasta. His abrupt departure excited little spec 
ulation, and was then passed over by all except 
George, who referred to it at intervals, and became 
unaccountably moody and discontented. One night 
he said he had made up his mind to go to San Fran- 
cisco : he was sure there must be letters from Eng- 
land. Peter tried to dissuade him from leaving, and 



338 CALIFORNIAN PICTURES. 

told him he could send for letters by express from 
Weaverville, at a cost of a few dollars. No ; he would 
go. Those express fellows never got anything. Be- 
sides, he was " tired of these diggings." He sold his 
share in the quicksilver machine, took his gold and 
blankets, and started off, after a hearty hand-shaking 
from each of the three men he left. We all liked 
the simple-hearted fellow, and were sorry to see him 
go ; but as we had determined to prospect the streams 
toward the Oregon line, which had not then been 
proved to contain gold, we would not pull up and go 
with him. He promised to send us word if he found 
good mines after his visit to the Bay, and told us 
where he would stop while there, — at a house on Pa- 
cific Wharf, much frequented by sailors and miners, 
where he had left his chest. Peter laughingly told 
him to be sure and get a good price for his dia- 
mond ; but he did not laugh in reply. Uttering 
only some kindly words, he wrung our hands again, 
and we saw him disappear in the woods up the hill. 
Later in the summer we prospected several of the 



THE TRINITY DIAMOND. 339 

northern streams, finding gold everywhere. But the 
Indians were threatening ; there were no trading- 
posts ; there was not time to get suppHes of our own 
from Sacramento before winter would set in ; and at 
last we all concluded to return to the lower part of 
the State. I went as far as San Francisco, and the 
next day after my arrival visited the place on Pacific 
Wharf, described by George, to inquire after him. 
It was a thin shell of a house, erected at one side of 
the wharf on the hulk of a bark, that after years of 
brave service on the ocean had been sunk and aban- 
doned at last in the dock mud. Only a year old, 
this house yet had the appearance of age, so weather- 
stained arid toppling was it. Its lower story was di- 
vided into a rude bar-room, eating-hall, and kitchen. 
Its upper floor was covered with what the sailors call 
" standee berths," provided only with a straw mat- 
tress, pillow, and a pair of heavy, dirty blankets. Un- 
der many of these berths sea-chests had been left on 
storage by their owners, mostly sailors, who had de- 
serted their ships to run off to the mines. The land- 



340 CALIFORNIAN PICTURES. 

lord himself was an " old salt " — an Englishman. I 
asked him if he knew George, and could tell me what 
had become of him. 

" Be you a friend of the lad ? " he inquired. 

I assured him that I was — that we had worked 
by one another on Trinity River, and he had prom- 
ised to write to me. 

" Well, it 's a queer story," said the landlord, a 
short, thick-built man, with ruddy face, who spoke his 
mother tongue with many elisions. " Ye see, George 
came rushin' in one night from the steamer McKim 
— she as runs 'tween here an' Sacramento. He was 
down from the mines, he said, an' 'ad come to see ole 
friends and take aw^ay his traps. I told him he would 
find all there in the chest — ye can see it under the 
bar 'ere yet, sir — all that his friend had n't taken 
away. ' Taken away — friend — what friend } ' said 
George. ' Why, your friend from Trinity River,' sez 
I ; ' the feller with the long, tow hair and fever an' 
ager face, and with terbacker-juice runnin' out of his 
mouth.' ' Has — he — been — here } ' sez George, 



THE TRINITY DIAMOND. 34 1 

slow like. ' Yes, he 's been here,' sez I, and tell I you 
sent him for some little things in the chest. ' There 
it is,' sez I ; and after he had treated like a gentleman, 
he pulled it out, took somethink from the till, put it 
in his shirt pocket, and went off. Before I could 
tell him more, sir, the lad — George, sir — made for 
the chest, opened it quick, rummaged all through it, 
more 'n once, an' then stood up all white an' glarin'. 
' D — him,' sez he — I never heard the lad swear 
before — ' d — him, he has stolen my diamond ! ' I 
thought he must be crazy, sir, with that mountain 
fever, belike, that the miners get in the diggins. 
' Why George, lad,' sez I, ' you 're jokin' me. How 
should a poor sailor-boy 'ave a real diamond — least- 
wise a honest boy like you } ' But George he only 
lowered at me, an' rushed for the door. He was off 
into the darkness an' fog before I could stop him, an' 
though I looked an' called after the lad, I could n't 
find him. Next mornin', when I opened the bar 
early, I seen a crowd standin' beyond there, sir, nigh 
the end o' the wharf. A man comin' from it told me 



342 CALIFORNIA^ PICTURES. 

a drownded body was fished up there. Mistrustin' 
suthin', sir, I went to spy the body. It was the puir 
lad's ! I felt guilty like an' awfu'. I took charge of 
the body, sir, an' give 'un a good funeral at Yerba 
Buena. Next mornin' the " Alta " said as how a 
young man from the mines 'ad fallen through a man- 
trap in the wharf, 'an give his name as they had it 
from I. But, sir, whether that be so, or he jumped 
off mad into the water, seekin' death willfully, I dun- 
no ; but I have my thoughts. I wrote to his old 
mother in England all about his end ; but it was a 
sad job, sir." 

The good fellow's voice grew husky as he spoke. 
I could not speak myself for a few minutes — poor 
George's fate seemed so sad. Who could have be- 
lieved that a pure delusion would lead one ignorant 
man to a mean crime, profitless as he found it, and 
another to frenzy and death ! Who would have sus- 
pected such a tragic sequel to our careless chat on 
the Trinity! 



THE OLD AND THE NEW. 



In no white winding-sheet goes out the year, 
Stiff, straight, and cold, with mourners by its bier, 

As in the hard Atlantic clime, 
Where bare-branched trees make desolate the sky. 
And streams are stilled but winds are piping high, 

And vapors turn to stinging rime. 

Not typical of death our old year's end, 
But rather like the parting of a friend 

Who leaves a grateful sense behind ; 
Or like a maiden loved and wedded late. 
Who goes to meet her joy with mien sedate, 

Yet calmly happy in her mind. 

The long dry summer sits upon the hills 
In memory yet; her russet color fills 

The distant scene with mellow tints ; 



344 CALIFORNIAN PICTURES. 

Only the spring that swells to meet the cloud, 
Or acorn-dropping oak, or south wind loud, 
Another mood of nature hints. 

The red geranium gleams along the wall, 
The pea-vines leafy tresses thickly fall, 

While roses blush in open air ; 
And oft in sheltered spots, 'mid friendly calms, 
The calla lily lifts its broad green palms 

And blossoms into saintly prayer. 

Soon all the tawny hills that thirst for rain 
Will don an emerald robe with golden train 

Of yellow i^oppies glowing like a flame j 
The summer from her dusty chrysalis 
Will waken to a life of winged bliss, 

And spring will be its happy name. 



LIBRftRY OF CONGRESS 



001 951 380 4 



LIBRPRY OF CONGRESS 



001 951 380 4 



